Suppose you needed to understand these data:
You’re especially interested in the trend present, so you can have some idea what to expect in the future. You suspect that there’s a downward trend (based on visual inspection of the data), but you’re not sure whether or not it’s significant, or whether the trend might be nonlinear, and you’re not a statistician. So you hire someone to analyze the data, who reports that the proper characterization of the long-term trend is summarized thus:
In fact, he flatly states that there’s no downward trend, as proved by the fact that the value for December of 2008 is about the same (a little bigger, in fact) than the value for December 1979. Then he presents you with a whopper of a bill for his services.
You protest. “That’s not a proper characterization of the trend over time! You’ve just connected two points, which only emphasizes the fluctuations that happen all the time, while ignoring all the other data! You’ve completely mischaracterized the real trend! I could’ve done a better job myself, just by fitting a trend line with ExCel!”
You’d be well advised not to pay for such analysis services. Characterizing the long-term behavior, and what might reasonably be expected in the future, in this way is — well — not smart.
But that’s the new meme du jour in the denialosphere. The headline is “Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979.” It seems to have started with DailyTech, then got echoed by boingboing, and has been repeated by many (including here, here, and here). The data are global sea ice area anomaly from satellite measurements. You can see that there might be a downward trend, and any idiot (well, apparently not any idiot) can see that connecting two data points and drawing a conclusion about the trend, or what we might expect the future to bring, is … you get the idea.
Fitting a trend line (with Excel or any other software) is a much better way to characterize the trend. It turns out that the trend is statistically significant (strongly so), so we can conclude that global sea ice area has trended down in the 30 years it’s been monitored by satellites. In fact there’s evidence that the rate of decline has increased, so the downtrend is actually accelerating — but the evidence is not yet statistically significant. We can certainly expect the future to show further decline, and we shouldn’t be at all surprised if it declines even more rapidly than it has so far.
Time to get back to real science. It’s much more fun.
200 responses so far ↓
Kipp Alpert // January 8, 2009 at 5:40 am |
Tamino:Funny stuff,and soooooo true! Man that was artistic. Deniers drive me crazy cause unlike Hank Roberts or others, they won’t make an effort to learn. I love it when a blogger says,look that up yourself, which is so true.KIPP
Kipp Alpert // January 8, 2009 at 6:17 am |
Tamino.Here are some arguments I get into over at accuweather. December temps?
1.AGW becomes extremely clear once we perform averages of averages of averages.
2.Can north and south america be burdened with local global warming worries while they suffer cold and in some areas.
3.Looks like solutions must be found quickly for Europe and Asia as they appear to be polluting the entire world with AGW.
4.The time to be philanthropic is quickly losing credibility with respect to reducing pollution in less polluted areas to offset another area’s abuse.
5.It is called responsibility, and polluting the planet in order to economically catch up should longer be acceptable by anyone’s standards.
6.Of course, this is true only if there is a real problem …… and maybe December anomalies are only weather?……………..bullmonkey
7.So-called “tech” bloggers that so blatantly twist statistics sicken me.
Tamino,That means you!!!!!!!! KIPP
koen // January 8, 2009 at 8:15 am |
This not only happens in the denialosphere. I have seen it happening in faculty, were students fitted a similar trendline to similar data (this was for a master’s degree, not some first-year students not knowing what they were doing).
When asked how and why they got this weird result, the answer was that this wrong trendline matched much better the expectations!
sod // January 8, 2009 at 10:04 am |
good post, as always.
i was just fighting a very similar approach. Jennifer Marohasy in this post
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/01/29-years-of-global-temperatures-based-on-satellite-data/
came to the conclusion, that the RSS temperature data over the last 29 years “does not suggest dramatic global warming. “
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/rss-msu-global-temps_2008-copy.gif
when i pointed out a Trend of more than 0.15°C per decade (funny, i used a similar approach like you…), she decided that
I rather agree with John McLean on this issue of trends – it potentially all depends on the time frame you choose. Instead of getting hung-up on the maths – afterall what did Mark Twain say about stats “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics” – let’s just read the graph and agree there has been no dramatic or unusual global warming over the last 29 years?
and
There is no reason to get hungup on the maths – this graph does not need to be reduced to a single value.
so it looks to me, that Tamino is “hungup” in math, and still stuck i “giving a single value to graphs”, while many denialist are in an advanced state, that doesn t need such concepts any longer!
[Response: The quote about statistics is from Benjamin Disraeli (although Twain did comment on Disraeli's comment).]
William Connolley // January 8, 2009 at 11:12 am |
The best way to make it obvious that these bozos don’t even believe it themselves is to offer to bet. If they think the trend is upwards, and you think its downwards, there is clear scope for profit.
You’re sort-of glossing over the possibility of different trends in different months though. There could easily be an upward trend in december, but downward in all other months.
bigcitylib // January 8, 2009 at 11:21 am |
Doesn’t this also have something to do with the fact that what we are really concerned with is summer ice? The “ice free arctic” predictions tend to come with the caveat that they apply to summertime conditions, which caveat the Tech Daily article completely ignores.
Even in the original tech daily graph, it was obvious that summer ice has been in decline.
TCOisbanned? // January 8, 2009 at 11:44 am |
Kind of a boring, “explain how somewhere in the deniosphere” is wrong post. Why not dig into the details of the things that are in question.
J // January 8, 2009 at 12:41 pm |
Hey, you could connect the low-outlier data point back in ~1996 (the one around -1.5) with the high-outlier point a few months ago (around +0.8 or whatever) and conclude that the whole ocean is freezing over!
Maybe I shouldn’t give people any ideas.
Ray Ladbury // January 8, 2009 at 2:16 pm |
TCO, You know, I’d agree with you, and by his last statement, so would Tamino. There are many more fun and interesting problems to which we could apply our talents. There’s one really big problem, though. The decision makers have in recent years quit listening to the experts.
We are told that recommendations based on the best science are “the opinion of the bureaucracy,” that Intelligent Design should be taught alongside evolution in the classroom, that climate change is a “hoax”. These are not the ravings just of the tin-hat crowd on websites. They’re coming from a President and senators!
I sincerely hope that the current administration will be different. The cabinet picks give hope, but the new President is still a Lawyer with no scientific training. While he seems to relish the advice of experts, it remains to be seen whether he will cleave to that advice when he discovers that so many of the voters are idiots.
Bob North // January 8, 2009 at 3:23 pm |
Overall, I am with TCO on this – this is really just another stupid is as stupid does post. The post and discussion on the Younger Dryas was much, much more interesting and enlightening.
Relative to the details, I didn’t see anything in the Daily Tech post that made any direct claim about the globabl sea ice trend, just that the level was the same as it was in 1979. Now you could reasonably argue that the implication was there and that it is misleading, but there was no direct statement as to the trend. BoingBoing, on the otherhand, clearly gets it wrong by falsely adding that the sea ice extent is the most in 29 years. Anybody should be able to look at the graph in the Daily Tech article and see that this claim is patently false.
[Response: I agree this is far less interesting to me than real science. But I regularly monitor wordpress posts using the "tag surfer," and there was such an explosion of posts about this that I felt something should be "on the record" showing how foolish it is.
As for dailytech, I disagree that their post is even plausibly, let alone reasonably, innocent.]
Jim Eager // January 8, 2009 at 4:09 pm |
Re William Connolley: “There could easily be an upward trend in december, but downward in all other months.”
Please tell us you are not being serious.
[Response: I suspect he means that the trend for all Decembers could be different from that for all Julys, etc. It's quite clear that the winter trend in northern sea ice is different from the summer/fall trend, and the same is true for snow cover.
But in fact the December trend for global ice area is also downward.]
george // January 8, 2009 at 4:37 pm |
Perhaps the saddest part of the “need” to address garbage related to global warming on the web is that at least some of it undoubtedly comes from people who would not get the time of day from scientists in the real world (ie, off the web).
In many (if not most) cases, when someone posts on a blog, you have absolutely no idea what their background/knowledge is on the subject they are posting on. They could very well be in junior high school* for all you know!
While some would say “That’s good because it means the argument will be considered rather than the person making it”, that is only valid to a certain extent.
Some of the arguments that people are making are clearly garbage and people like Tamino do not have the infinite amount of time required to address the specifics of every stupid argument (hence general posts like the one above).
But, let’s be honest, if we had some way of knowing that a particular post declaring that “Global warming stopped in 1998″ came from a junior high student, who among us in his/her right mind would pay any attention to the “argument”? (beyond perhaps politely advising the student to study a little more on the subject and perhaps pointing them to some basic material on the web for that purpose). Who among us would take them seriously?
*PS in case any junior high students are reading this, my purpose is NOT to pick on you or discourage you from reading sites like this. On the contrary, learn as much as you can.
My point is merely to point out that the vast majority of people in junior high have a great deal to learn about science and the likelihood that any one of them is somehow “onto” some huge paradigm-shifting discovery that all of the professional scientists have somehow missed ( eg, “global warming is bunk” or “global warming has stopped”) is close to nil. It may be unfortunate, but it is also reality.
Deech56 // January 8, 2009 at 5:29 pm |
You gotta love this quote, “Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.”
First “cooling since 1998″ disproves global warming, now “best quarterly recovery, evah” demonstrates that sea ice is no longer melting.
I thought that the response of the University of Illinois was rather mild: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ (see the “Statement related to Daily Tech article of January 1, 2009″ link), and didn’t address the obvious cherry picking.
Andrew // January 8, 2009 at 5:31 pm |
Nice post. I was just wondering where those graphs came from? They weren’t on the Boing Boing post, nor in the Daily Tech article. Both of those stories had a far different graph in them which showed a trend that was not as significant as the one you show. I’ve also updated my post with a link to yours so that readers can see that there is not a consensus on the issue.
[Response: I made the graphs myself using data available from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (there's a link on the Climate Data Links page).
The stories reproduce a graph from Cryosphere Today, which shows the same trend. It's just as significant statistically but not as evident visually, because the y-axis is on a much smaller scale so they can include more information on a single graph.
And there is a concensus on the issue -- among those who know!]
Deech56 // January 8, 2009 at 5:40 pm |
RE: Bob North // January 8, 2009 at 3:23 pm
I would disagree; the title states, “Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979,” subheading: “Rapid growth spurt leaves amount of ice at levels seen 29 years ago,” and this has certainly been interpreted to mean that sea ice is recovering. I didn’t see any disclaimers or caveats in the text. I encountered this at my local newspaper (trying html tags – please bear with me).
Dano // January 8, 2009 at 6:10 pm |
First,
I hope you get a full-time teaching gig if you don’t have one already.
Second,
This “two dates” tactic is a recent spinoff of … take your pick: cherry-picking or fudging stats.
We have seen this tactic recently with both Arctic ice AND temperatures.
Not sure which think-tank or noise machine outlet started it, but it has legs now. Thank you for the timely debunk.
Best,
D
Dano // January 8, 2009 at 6:15 pm |
Ray Ladbury writes:
There’s one really big problem, though. The decision makers have in recent years quit listening to the experts.
No.
Only some. Sadly, these were the ones recently in power. Happily, they’ve been shown the door.
Most decision-makers (I know many and advise a few) know the story. Businesspeople too, for the most part.
The issue is the perception that many voters think GLOBUL WARMINS A SCAYUM. This is not true – there happens to be an energetic, vocal minority fringe that don’ want no GUMMINT makin laws.
Best,
D
Bob North // January 8, 2009 at 6:35 pm |
Tamino (and Deech) – Note that I didn’t say Daily Tech was “innocent” but rather that they made no direct assertions relative to the trend. Even though you don’t state it absolutely directly, you certainly imply in several places that they did make assertions with respect to the trend. What is presented in the DailyTech article appears factual on its face, but might be better characterized as selective reporting (simlar to what I was pointing to over at RC about the nature of press releases from issue advacacy groups).
johnG // January 8, 2009 at 8:31 pm |
Tamino,
I read everything you write but rarely comment. Thanks for this type of post, though I understand that it’s boring to some. It’s a joy to have articles like the Daily Tech’s exposed. From here, I read the Daily Tech article, found the flaws, checked their source and found more contradictions. And regarding their mention of polar bears: they could also have mentioned Canada’s recent interest in controlling the northwest passage, or Russia’s interest in claiming the arctic for their exploitation.
Thank you
John G
John Mashey // January 8, 2009 at 9:44 pm |
george:
regarding junior high students, you might recall:
Google: kristen byrnes
Large numbers of people were perfectly willing to believe a 15-year-old had disproved AGW… (or at least promote the ponderthemaunder website),
but it’s possible that such are not regular readers of Open Mind :-)
Sully // January 8, 2009 at 10:20 pm |
Tamino,
I think you already broke your New Year’s resolution…lol
Zeke Hausfather // January 8, 2009 at 11:21 pm |
Bah, I was planning on writing up a post on just this subject. I even went as far as downloading the data and doing some simple linear regressions.
Oh well, at least I was scooped by the best. :-p
fred // January 8, 2009 at 11:40 pm |
Bob North, you have to be kidding me.
“What is presented in the DailyTech article appears factual on its face, but might be better characterized as selective reporting”
Selective reporting?
If someone owned a company whose share price was dropping significantly and they produced an article similar to the dailytech one to convince/trick investors that the share price was not dropping, well I would expect they would be convicted of fraud.
“selective reporting” would be the defense. But everyone would be able to see it’s more than that. You don’t have to directly lie to mislead people.
A great number of people on the internet in recent days have interpreted this dailytech article as showing that arctic sea ice has not declined.
Michael Hauber // January 9, 2009 at 12:23 am |
My reading of the cryosphere today chart (tale of the tape) was that 2008 ended with nearly a million square kilometres less ice than 1979. It was in November that sea ice was relatively close to historically normal values, and since has dropped to almost record low values again.
[Response: The Cryosphere Today graph is of daily values; my plots are monthly average data from NSIDC.]
TCOisbanned? // January 9, 2009 at 2:19 am |
This whole “they said this, but implied that” is so, so, not interesting. I mean I could play the same game with Mann’s touted 1998 warmest year ever (true, but implying more than it was…blablabla.)
Let’s crunch some PCA instead.
Kipp Alpert // January 9, 2009 at 2:27 am |
Post#2.These are real time comments this week from Accuweather.Why tamino’s post is so relevant, is that every winter the denialosphere is in heat because it is cold. They said December temps are such and such or averages are averages never making it to the point. The point is that with global warming, it’s not a 20 or even 60 year trend. TCO would like a five year trend.
KIPP
[Response: Under the circumstances of this post, "averages of averages" are just averages. Since all the 1-year averages use the same number of months, 5-yr averages of 1-year averages are equal to 5-yr averages of monthly averages.]
Brian // January 9, 2009 at 2:39 am |
I’d just like to say, as a layman, these posts are fantastic. It might not be as technically interesting to the more advanced visitors to this site, but your “How to not analyze data” and “Stupid is…” articles are great for visitors such as myself, who look at the graphs and think “something looks fishy here,” but don’t have the knowledge (such as needing to normalize data between satellites and ground readings) or aren’t familiar with your data sources.
Please don’t let me stop you from having your fun, but I strongly disagree with TCOisbanned that these posts aren’t interesting or important. Quite frankly, I love your graphs and examples. They make me laugh, and I think they should be art.
Kipp Alpert // January 9, 2009 at 2:59 am |
Brian:
If you get the time go over to accuweather blog.They are all deniers, and don’t believe or haven’t learned about AGW. Except for the ones that would like to cut you throat, they are very silly, and very very dumb. KIPP
Kipp Alpert // January 9, 2009 at 3:18 am |
Tamino:Since one year averages are monthly averages,just like five year averages are monthly averages, than the 33 year averages are monthly averages.Now 396 months of averages are enough averages for me to make a bold remark. The Ice is melting!! I’m sinking.KIPP
Kipp Alpert // January 9, 2009 at 3:45 am |
Tamino:But very seriously we moved our clocks up one second this year, so I guess that means global cooling, right? CO2 absorbs the long IR but it also absorbs the cool IR, from the stratosphere as well as the scattered blue, so you can see CO2, with a periscope. KIPP
TCOisbanned? // January 9, 2009 at 3:50 am |
Tamino: Please disown Kipp. He’s like a little babbling lefty version of welovoverocks from CA. He gushes too much.
Deep Climate // January 9, 2009 at 4:35 am |
Bob North: “Daily Tech… made no direct assertions relative to the trend.”
TCO: “This whole “they said this, but implied that” is so, so, not interesting. I mean I could play the same game with Mann’s touted 1998 warmest year ever (true, but implying more than it was…blablabla.)”
To me, this makes Daily Tech appear deliberately deceptive, rather than merely cretinous. Since neither adjective applies to Mann, the parallel is misplaced to say the least.
sod // January 9, 2009 at 7:25 am |
well, apart from those who just do endpoint comparison and those like Jennifer who don t agree that any statistical analysis is useful, we have the complete opposite as well:
over at deltoid, Jon Jenkins defended his use of a 6th degree polynomial to show a trend on satellite data with the claim:
It follows that the T curve will also be a massive polynomial in (t) and will be best approximated by the largest polynomial possible.
yes, the largest polynomial possible, will give the best approximation.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/the_australians_war_on_science_32.php#comment-1305532
Paolo Morelli // January 9, 2009 at 11:04 am |
Tamino: “I suspect he means that the trend for all Decembers could be different from that for all Julys, etc. [..] in fact the December trend for global ice area is also downward”
BTW I did verify, just for fun, that the trend of global sea ice area is negative for each of the twelve months. Strongly so during Northern Hemisphere summer, and much more moderately from January to March, but still always negative.
Ray Ladbury // January 9, 2009 at 2:04 pm |
Sod, I would say that those who contend one can only use statistics to lie have demonstrated either that they have very limited abilities in statistical reasoning or that their own tendency when presented with a powerful tool is to adapt it to mendacity. It is rather like someone being presented with an atomic force microscope and immediately wondering if it could be put to use for counterfeiting purposes.
B Buckner // January 9, 2009 at 2:28 pm |
Fred:
“If someone owned a company whose share price was dropping significantly and they produced an article similar to the dailytech one to convince/trick investors that the share price was not dropping, well I would expect they would be convicted of fraud.”
So would you therefore also disagree with the following statement? The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 2008 at a level in the top ten all time annual closes (true) and continues its 30-year long rise.
Bob North // January 9, 2009 at 3:35 pm |
Fred – Absolutely not kidding. Go back and re-read the Tech Daily article sentence by sentence and point to one statement that is factually incorrect (there are a couple of minor points I haven’t verified, but they don’t pertain to the topic of this point)Please do note my earlier comments regarding the implications and that I wouldn’t necessarily call Daily Tech innocent. Relative to your assertion relative to a company being convicted of fraud for a similar press, I say NO WAY, this is pretty much standard fare for shareholder reports.
Deep Climate – You could certainly call Daily Tech deliberately deceptive, but then you would also have to call Tamino deliberately deceptive for implying that Daily Tech made a direct assertion about the trend. I don’t think I would go that far in either case. Understand that the Daily tech article is selective reporting or spin, if you want to call it that, read both articles with intelligence and understanding of past events, and you can tell where the truth lies.
Ray Ladbury // January 9, 2009 at 3:52 pm |
B. Buckner,
You raise an interesting point. Let’s look at an analogous period. Say you bought into the DJIA in September of 1929. Bad move, right? Yet, 30 years later, you’d be patting yourself on the back. (OK, given how old you’d be, maybe not unless you did a lot of Yoga.) Why is that? Because the fundamentals favored a rising market once the crisis in confidence was over. The question is whether the fundamentals are similarly favorable today. Probably they are not, given Peak Oil, rising economic fortunes of BIRC economies, etc. However, I’m not pulling money our of my 401k either.
In terms of climate, you have to look at the fundamentals as well–in this case physics. There is no physical reason to suggest that warming has stop. There is no statistical evidence suggesting it has in fact stopped. I’d say it hasn’t stopped.
Hank Roberts // January 9, 2009 at 4:07 pm |
Buckner, 30 years is useful for climate, it’s not arbitrary: http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/01/results-on-deciding-trends.html
Do you claim some period is useful for stock market numbers?
http://www.chicagogsb.edu/faculty/selectedpapers/sp16.pdf.
Jim Eager // January 9, 2009 at 4:16 pm |
Thanks for clarifying, Tamino, now I understand William’s point.
Luna_the_cat // January 9, 2009 at 5:20 pm |
False statements at Daily Tech article:
“Earlier this year, predictions were rife that the North Pole could melt entirely in 2008.” –Where? By whom? I saw no such prediction by any climatologist….
“Instead, the Arctic ice saw a substantial recovery. ” —Ok, entirely aside from the fact that the writer is apparently deliberately conflating the GLOBAL ice levels with ARCTIC ice levels…..No. Not even vaguely plausible. And since Chapman actually made this clear, he knew better.
How is this not deliberately lying?
Barton Paul Levenson // January 9, 2009 at 7:12 pm |
B Buckner, being very clever indeed, posts this satirical gem:
Now, of course, 30 years is the period required to see a trend in climate data. A trend. The long-term warming trend in Earth’s mean global annual surface temperature does not mean we will never have cold winters again, nor that people won’t die in cold weather events and avalanches. And the long-term growth rate of the American economy doesn’t mean we won’t have recessions or even depressions. Nonetheless, if the long-term growth rate of the American economy were negative, it would mean bad things for our civilization. Ditto if the long-term growth rate of surface temperature were positive.
Oh, wait. It is.
Hank Roberts // January 9, 2009 at 7:17 pm |
> how is this not lying
Media law in the US says owners can decide what is presented to the public according to their own values.
Advertising law in the US says advertisers can engage in what is called “puffery” — statements that no reasonable adult would actually believe were meant to be factually correct — to “puff up” what they’re trying to sell. The analogy is the change made by puffing up rice with hot air, or popcorn. Same nutritional value, but crunchier.
Knowing that, look up DailyTech.
Some of what you read is the owner’s opinion, some is puffery, and some residual amount might be true.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Nick_Schulz
Dano // January 9, 2009 at 7:49 pm |
re-read the Tech Daily article sentence by sentence and point to one statement that is factually incorrect
Is this a statement of the dependency of the FUD-spreading community on the need for credulous readers, or a damning indicator of the state of the American educational system’s ability to turn out critical thinkers?
Best,
D
Eli Rabett // January 9, 2009 at 8:11 pm |
If you stare at enough sea ice maps, what becomes clear is that the difference in December is not in the Arctic Ocean but in the Baltic, and in the Sea of Oshkosh or whatever the area east of Vladivostok is. In September the difference is in the coverage of the Arctic Ocean basin.
tamino // January 9, 2009 at 9:35 pm |
It happened again: while moderating comments I accidentally hit the “delete” button instead of the “approve” button. Alas, wordpress has no function to recover deleted comments.
I’m not sure who the commenter was, not even sure it was on this thread. But if your comment disappeared and you can’t imagine why — it may have been entirely an accident.
Kipp Alpert // January 9, 2009 at 10:18 pm |
In the Arctic, and all over the Northern Hemisphere ice has been melting.The back of Mt.Everest is snow free, in Montana Glaciers have melted, in the Arctic thin Ice replaces Ice sheets. As the temperatures steadily increase year after year for 150 years what else could one expect.We know that the energy budget
for the Earth shows that more energy comes in, than goes out. We know that when the Earth has 380ppm of CO2, it blankets outgoing long IR. This is a physical reality.Montana’s Glacier Park will have no more ice in 20 years. Canadian forests, dying from the Pine beetle, is another huge loss which was a great carbon sink. As temperatures go up, more evidence of The Beginnings of the effects of Global Warming will become more evident. The Arctic is now the size from the Mississippi to California. It has receded
about one third of it’s former self.The daily tech Graph says nothing,because it does not qualify the difference for Ice skating Ice,and Ice sheets
which are huge. Just like the MWP, this is another small effort to change observational and physical reality to fit the Audience.A small number of discontented computer geeks, is not the audience that Daily Tech needs. Like Moses, it has stretched it’s arms out to every undereducated denier to boost it’s obvious small appeal. Once a week Daily tech offers an anti Global warming article to titillate it’s perspective larger group of fools. KIPP
Hank Roberts // January 9, 2009 at 11:17 pm |
Kipp, please, think about making the effort to give your sources for what you write.
It takes a little more work, but it will make you much more credible over time if you keep track of what you read and cite it when you write it down from memory.
It will also make it much easier for you and others to check what you recollect and update it.
Assuming you’re using Firefox, you can use this extension: http://www.zotero.org/
Or just keep a book mark folder and keep track of everything you will want to quote later.
Otherwise you may get into difficulty when someone asks you, for example, what you mean by writing
“We know that when the Earth has 380ppm of CO2, it blankets outgoing long IR.” — which might mean something in radiation physics terms, but might not.
or
“This is a physical reality.” — which is a philosophical question or possibly an observation, but since it’s been a long time since Earth reached that point, one would wonder how you’d have known it to be true.
None of us can be experts in very much. It’s tempting to want to be seen as someone who knows a whole lot of stuff. But it’s far more useful to be someone who knows how to start asking good questions in ways that lead to current knowledge we may not have found yet.
TCOisbanned? // January 9, 2009 at 11:32 pm |
That’s me. Hank, I am a badazz question asker. Have had people like Chefen yell at me and tell me I was an idiot…and then come back a few days later and say, your question led me to a flawed assumption in my logic.
Hank Roberts // January 9, 2009 at 11:50 pm |
> an idiot … led to … a flawed assumption
And that’s how science can work. An early paper doesn’t even have to be right, if it leads to interesting and productive work investigating the new idea. Of course many early papers never do get cited. That too is how it works.
It’s not enough to be an idiot. What’s important is to be a _useful_ idiot.
Hank Roberts // January 10, 2009 at 12:23 am |
Or, in pictures:
http://abstrusegoose.com/strips/pantheon.JPG
Dano // January 10, 2009 at 12:42 am |
Sheesh, Hank. I like to think I’m an applied researcher, but I didn’t know about this extension.
You da man. Again.
Best,
D
Kipp Alpert // January 10, 2009 at 12:52 am |
Hank:My motive is not to sound more intellegent than you or anyone else, but to
insist on the fact that the Earth is getting warmer rapidly. Every day there are different facets of the Global Warming issue, being brought to fruition. Even the more qualified who remark about climate change, don’t for me, hit home about the meaning of a warming world, or it’s mitigation. If you think that I can argue my points, and also post my sources,I will. I believe in this issue profoundly, and if one John Doe reads my post, and moves a muscle, then I am happy. Hank,tell me what you think about this issue and why sources are so relevant;Thanks,KIPP
Dano // January 10, 2009 at 12:53 am |
Hank, just took the Zotero tour. If one of my papers gets accepted for a conf in Berkeley, I’d like to buy you a beer or three.
Best,
D
P. Lewis // January 10, 2009 at 1:20 am |
Before Tamino says “enough already with the thanks to Hank”, do check out Zotero folks. Already installed it on my m/c and already being used since Hank mentioned it.
A big hat tip to Hank.
Kipp Alpert // January 10, 2009 at 3:07 am |
Hank Roberts: Thanks for your help! For my post about the IR.
Outgoing longwave radiation.
http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/ritter/geog101/textbook/energy/radiation_balance.html
Fact of physics,global warming
http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/physics-of-the-greenhouse-effect-pt-2/KIPP
Kipp Alpert // January 10, 2009 at 3:13 am |
Hank Roberts:
Long wave radiation
aip.org/link/?APCPCS/320/179/1
Physics of Global warming
http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/physics-of-the-greenhouse-effect-pt-2/
thanks,Kipp
Hank Roberts // January 10, 2009 at 3:37 am |
D – any time!
Kipp — still not sure where you get “380ppm … blankets outgoing …” — we’re abou at 380 now — or what your wording refers to. Maybe just too few words used for clarity? Usually a direct quotation — inside quotation marks — with a cite works to help people find the actual source.
Just to make an example of myself, on this one, I searched Dr. Ritter’s page quickly and didn’t find your source. Looking at Chris’s page (lose the last 4 letters for your link to work), Chris writes there about atmospheres working as “… a blanket to outgoing radiation …” but the “s” makes it a verb and a very different word.
As a verb “blankets” usually means ‘completely’ covers or blocks or obscures. That usage turns up often in mention of an old idea, since found wrong, that at some concentration a “saturation” of the CO2 bands would put a cap on warming. And as we head past 380 ppm toward 500 or more, that ain’t happening.
Just nitpickery ….
———–
Nitpicking — it’s the basic primate social bond (grin)
Bob North // January 10, 2009 at 4:36 am |
Tamino – Might have been one of my comments that accidently got deleted. I will try to recreate it.
Luna-the-cat -
re: “…predictions were rife that the North Pole could melt entirely in 2008.” This was actually one of the statements in the Daily Tech article I did not attempt to verify prior to my previous post. However, I have since come across this from NSIDC –
“Taken together, an assessment of the available evidence, detailed below, points to another extreme September sea ice minimum. Could the North Pole be ice free this melt season? Given that this region is currently covered with first-year ice, that seems quite possible. ” from NSIDC 2008 Prediction . So at least one groupd of ice experts predicted the North Pole could be ice free summer. However, I haven’t searched further to see if others picked up on this or independently predicted the same, so I will concede the point.
re: substantial recovery – DAily Tech could easily have been referring to the recovery from the summertime lows as any long term recovery. Spin, yes; potentially deceptive, yes; deliberately lying, probably not.
Dano – Not familiar with the FUD acronym, please explain so I might be able to understand your post (if any of the words are profane, you can just leave the starting letter).
I think that was about the extent of my original post. Now to add-on one point. I am not trying to say that there are not clear implications and spin in their article. Just don’t fall into the same trap and imply that they said something they didn’t. You don’t necessarily want to level the playing field.
Kipp Alpert // January 10, 2009 at 4:55 am |
Hank Roberts:Your a nice guy, and I follow your advice. Since I realize I know next to nothing, and as my mother used to say”What grows up can also grow down”my ego is just an acorn, and my knowledge limited.Any advice I will follow, and I have already learned more by touching base with those sources I use. I’ll take your Portrait for your next book.Nitpicking for some, is learning for others. When you offer sources, you have more confidence in your Science. SEE ya! Kipp
Hank Roberts // January 10, 2009 at 5:01 am |
One for your relevant collections:
http://geotest.tamu.edu/userfiles/216/NorthH264.mp4
Deech56 // January 10, 2009 at 12:38 pm |
Bob North: FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt – there’s a wikipedia entry for it.
Kipp (and anyone else): One of Hank’s characteristics is to ask for sources, and I do the same back on my home message board (in fact, I get chided for my detailed posts). Why? Real science often gets distorted by people who make a claim based on an item in a manuscript (or even worse, a press release of news article) that is disagreement with the conclusions or the overall data of a given paper. Uncovering these distortions and separating opinion from fact are powerful methods.
Science is not a court of law, where only the evidence that helps your side needs to be brought to the fore. Any theory needs to take into consideration all of the data – sometimes there are puzzling data, but explanations are often uncovered in later research; which brings us to another point – important papers tend to get cited. Papers that tell us little or have serious flaws do not (except in rebuttal) (OK – except for my papers, which were in esoteric fields).
One does not have to be a scientist to take a scientific approach to posting. Many of the regulars here have established a great deal of credibility based on their well-researched postings (which reminds me – I haven’t seen much from Timothy Chase lately).
Phil. // January 10, 2009 at 3:15 pm |
Bob North // January 10, 2009 at 4:36 am
Luna-the-cat -
re: “…predictions were rife that the North Pole could melt entirely in 2008.” This was actually one of the statements in the Daily Tech article I did not attempt to verify prior to my previous post. However, I have since come across this from NSIDC -
“Taken together, an assessment of the available evidence, detailed below, points to another extreme September sea ice minimum. Could the North Pole be ice free this melt season? Given that this region is currently covered with first-year ice, that seems quite possible. ” from NSIDC 2008 Prediction . So at least one groupd of ice experts predicted the North Pole could be ice free summer. However, I haven’t searched further to see if others picked up on this or independently predicted the same, so I will concede the point.
Actually what was said in DailyTech referred to the ‘entire North Pole’ which conveys quite a different impression to the prediction you quoted which from its original context clearly referred to the region of 90ºN only. A region that was normally covered with thick multiyear ice rather than the thinner single year ice that covered it in summer ‘08. If I recall correctly Serreze estimated a 50:50 chance.
Philippe Chantreau // January 10, 2009 at 5:16 pm |
Of course, when scientists say that something is “quite possible,” they mean that the probability of it happening is large enough as to be non negligible and worthy to be taken into consideration. In other words, it is quite possible. At daily tech, they understand it in a different way, because they’re, well, whatever. And when scientists studying polar sea ice talk about the Pole, they talk about the Pole. As in: the Pole, not the all Arctic Ocean. At Daily Tech, well, whatever.
Distortion, Obfuscation, Confusion, that’s DOC denial, the doctor with a PhD from the same university than Richard Courtney…
Hank Roberts // January 10, 2009 at 7:01 pm |
As Deech56 noted above:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
(see the “Statement related to Daily Tech article of January 1, 2009″ link)
chriscolose // January 10, 2009 at 11:16 pm |
Kipp, I hope I didn’t confuse you with perhaps sloppy terminology, though now I am too lazy to even look back at what I wrote. The greenhouse effect being like a blanket is an analogy that breaks down very quickly.
Gerda // January 11, 2009 at 11:10 pm |
another thanks to hank for the tool :-)
and stick with it kipp. your prose is fine, you have passion. and you’ll learn the referencing and logical thought to go with it.
stupidhuman // January 12, 2009 at 2:33 pm |
I am puzzled. What is the connection that they are making between sea ice area and climate? Are they comparing only yearly maximum areas? And, isn’t maximum sea ice area more an indicator of “weather” than “climate”? I would be more impressed if they were comparing ice volumes, or even yearly minimums.
I would be interested to play with that data, anyway. I would like to see a plot of yearly minimum area versus maximum area. I wonder if the difference between the two is more indicative of climate change than simple areal? extent.
EliRabett // January 14, 2009 at 1:00 pm |
Actually, with the right sort of blanket, it is not such a bad analogy. Of course there are also experiments you should not do in the home which make the point even better.
len // January 17, 2009 at 1:02 pm |
all,
good discussion. what troubles me about most comments on these sites, is the fact that almost everyone has already chosen sides, and hence their arguments are notably biased. i’ve often found it most useful to be as objective about your science as possible.
some general ‘ big picture’ observations about earth climatic trends:
1.) the earth has been generally cooling for the last 55 million years, albeit with many humps in between.
2.) humans are polluting. any real argument here?
3.) humans have flourished during 10,000 years of warming ( a sweet spot in climactic conditions on earth – for humans )
4.) for the past 2 million years earth has been plunging in and out of major glaciations
5.) 4 times in the past 400,000 years earth has warmed to levels similar to our current global average temps. each of these occurred on roughly 100,000 intervals. each has been followed by major glacial periods.
6.) trendlines on short time scales can worry everyone, but most likely won’t mean much long term. our temp history from proxy data proves this fact many many times over. there are however situations where temps continually trend down – causing catastrophic glaciation – but over the last 2 million years, there have been no instances of temps trending so high that it causes catastrophic changes to earth.
7.) over the past century, our sun has been gracious with its activity – science can not yet ascertain exactly how this may have affected earth’s climate.
8.) CO2 climate models are in their infancy, and quite frankly are like any other first-order models… as you tweak parameters to match trends… things can look great… only to discover later that you turned the wrong knob… been there, done that – it is extremely easy to be fooled.
9.) humans unbridled destruction of the planet must stop. it is sickening. it is hard to argue that we haven’t screwed up our biosphere. any efforts to minimize pollution should be supported.
10.) if we could, we could take today’s global temperatures and straight line it horizontally into the future. sorry, the earth will not cooperate, with or without our inputs. big changes are coming – they always have, it is just a matter of when.
11.) philosophical question: if we knew the earth was dangerously warming or cooling (independent of anthropogenic effects), should humans take action to counter it with our limited knowledge base?
Ray Ladbury // January 17, 2009 at 2:25 pm |
Len, a few comments on your “big picture”
1)Irrelevant to human beings, as our ancestors were living in trees 55 million years ago.
2)OK, but doesn’t it make sense to define HOW we are polluting and what its effects are so we can mitigate the situation.
3)Actually, I would say the key to human civilization fluorishing has been the stability of climate in the past 10000 years.
4)OK, so what?
5)Again, so what?
6) I notice you tailor your timespan so that it does no include the PETM, one of the greatest mass extinction events in Earth’s history–and caused by warming. Now why would that be, I wonder?
7)Horse puckey! The effects of TSI are pretty easy to model.
8)Absolute horse puckey! Climate models have been around for over 100 years, albeit computerized only in the last 50. Second, paramters are not “tweaked”. Climate models are dynamical models in which parameters are set using the best available data and then the model is verified with independent data. Your ignorance of this one point alone invalidates your entire argument.
9)To mitigate pollution, you must first understand its origin and effects–that means modeling.
10)Oh, so,let’s see. So I shouldn’t buckle my seatbelt because some day I’ll die of a heart attack or cancer anyway. Brilliant!
11)Irrelevant. We’re already changing the climate. We have a choice of developing in a way that is sustainable or we can simply refuse to use our excess gray matter and suffer the same fate as yeast in a bottle of beer and render our environment unlivable. Your choice.
Len, the reason positions are set is because all the evidence is on one side. You either line up with the evidence or against it. Again, your choice.
len // January 17, 2009 at 3:21 pm |
ray,
you’ve made some credible points. i’m surely not replying to attack you in any way… hopefully you weren’t intending that either.
responses 1-5 i can live with, however, saying “so what” indicates the data is invalid or not applicable to our futures… not necessarily so.
your response to number 6 is exact, though i had no ill intent… where in time do you stop? maybe we need to look back 1 billion years for relevant data – your guess is as good as mine.
your reponse to number 7 is most worrisome. often times in human history, we’ve found our current understanding to be somewhat flawed or outright wrong. i’m not a climatologist or a statistician, just an engaged engineer, however i find the correlation of solar output (as it relates to sunspot data) over the last ~400 years with climate on earth to be compelling. i’m not saying ‘causal’, but very compelling, and worth more than just the casual “just coincidence” i often read regarding these data.
your response to 8. parameters are tweaked… they’ve all been given weight in one respect or another, and other parameters have not been accounted for (we could take this discussion of line if you want)
and 9. i agree.
10. i understand your point, but no need to be so brutal! :)
11. irrelevant is a reasonable answer. my guess is that there is a nice bell curve of responses on this supposition. all credible, because it is a pholosophical question.
i really don’t think all of the evidence is on one side, but i do agree that we should do whatever is in our power to reduce pollution and our overall destruction of the earth. but to do that, people like you and i (maybe not specifically you and i), need to be able to sit down and find solutions without polarizing the argument.
i sincerely appreciate your feedback and frank discussion.
len
kim // January 17, 2009 at 3:27 pm |
1. Ray’s objection is irrelevant.
2. We’re really concerned over how much of a pollutant CO2 is and the costs and benefits of its abatement.
3, What’s strengthened humans, and other species, is the changes in niches.
4. OK, so maybe a glaciation would be a adversely extreme change in niches.
5. So, warm is better than cold.
6. We also haven’t had the possibility of anthropogenic effect over that time period, len, so if CO2 is important, we don’t really know what might happen with rising temps.
7. len just said science doesn’t know how the gracious sun has heated the globe lately. It isn’t necessarily by plain unvarnished TSI, in fact, pretty surely isn’t, so please stop beating that dead horse. How the sun drives the climate is unknown at present, and won’t be discovered unless attention is paid to it. It might be useful to know.
8. It’s become obvious that the models inadequately parameterize convection, and clouds, and probably exaggerate the water vapor feedback to CO2 forcing.
9. We must all keep our rooms clean.
10. Climate manipulation on a global scale is a Pandora’s Box. It’s bad enough on a regional scale.
11. See #10.
The climate is unsettling. The science progresses. Curiosity is glorious.
============================
Layman Lurker // January 17, 2009 at 3:34 pm |
Ray states:
“…paramters are not “tweaked”. Climate models are dynamical models in which parameters are set using the best available data and then the model is verified with independent data. ”
Could you expand on this please Ray. On the face, I don’t see the distinction between “tweaking” and setting using the best available data.
dhogaza // January 17, 2009 at 4:56 pm |
Len’s implication is that the “dials” on the model are turned right or left until output matches expectations. And by extension that there’s no need for any deep understanding of the physical processes being modeled, etc.
While Ray’s stating that the dials are set based on our best understanding of the physics. Where model outputs diverge from our physical understanding of how climate works, the “dials” aren’t simply wiggled right-and-left until the outputs meet expectations. Rather, the divergence is used as the basis for further study into which parts of the model are wrong – maybe in the parameterization, maybe in the model equations, heck, maybe bugs in the code. Parameters will be modified (if appropriate) as a result of this improved understanding.
It might help to remember that the main goal of those modeling climate is to increase our understanding of how climate works. “dial wiggling” to tweak output doesn’t address that goal …
len // January 17, 2009 at 5:18 pm |
dhogaza,
right on. modeling is important as it helps our understanding… which in turn helps the modeling… and so on. you’ve got to do the modeling, but in doing so, must remain vigilantly open to other possibilities.
Layman Lurker // January 17, 2009 at 5:28 pm |
dhogaza, thanks for your response. I agree 100% with your comment. Model parameterizations should be set based on physics and science. Not sure how you get that meaning out of Ray’s comment though.
I am no expert on this which is why I asked the question. It would seem to me that there could be some “tweaking” (if you want to call it that) within the uncertainty ranges. At some point though, if the science surrounding certain coefficients is still an open question (such as some feedbacks?) are not these ranges so large that it diminishes the significance of the output?
Barton Paul Levenson // January 17, 2009 at 6:33 pm |
kim writes:
Sunlight does heat the globe. We can be pretty sure of that. We can be equally sure that more sunlight will mean a hotter globe, and less sunlight will mean a cooler globe, if the amount of the change in sunlight is sufficiently large.
TSI measures sunlight. It stands for “Total Solar Illuminance.”
You are assuming that the sun drives current climate change, and there is no a priori reason to believe that true. You seem to be starting with the conclusion you want and then looking for facts to confirm it. That’s not a good way to do science.
dhogaza // January 17, 2009 at 6:38 pm |
Physically realistic possibilities.
An example of a possibility that’s not? The possibility that our understanding of how CO2 in the atmosphere works.
Another? The whole cosmic ray stuff, which depends on an unknown (to physics) and apparently unmeasurable mechanism that magically works exactly in a way that let’s us off the hook for CO2 emissions.
Ray Ladbury // January 17, 2009 at 6:44 pm |
Len, Here’s the thing I do not understand. You state right up front that you aren’t an expert. Neither am I. Yet, when I was exposed the conclusions of the IPCC reports, my reaction was to go and learn as much as I could about the science. Now as a physicist, I had some advantages here. I at least understood the difference between statistical and dynamical modeling. I had the opportunity to actually discuss some of the issues with climate scientists, and in about 10 years of study, off and on, I came to see that the science is remarkably self-consistent.
I agree that if you look at 400 years of solar history, you get pretty good correlation until you come to about the past 100–and especially the past 30–years. There is a significant change.
You say the evidence is all on one side. Perhaps you would care to provide some peer-reviewed studies that poke any significant holes in the consensus position. Those few contrarian papers that have been published don’t usually lead to much, because they are based on mistaken understanding (e.g. Schwartz08, Spencer’s ouvre) or do not yield any understanding of climate.
There are uncertainties in our understanding of climate to be sure. They are not so large that they invalidate what we do know–and the signature of a well-mixed, long-lived greenhouse gas is pretty unmistakable.
Ray Ladbury // January 17, 2009 at 6:53 pm |
Layman Lurker,
In dynamical modeling, one uses the best available data to set the forcings and feedbacks of the model and then tests the model on an independent dataset. There is no wiggle room. One can look at confidence intervals for these quantities, and you can look at how model performance changes as you let the forcings vary within confidence intervals, you do not let parameters vary independently to improve the fit.
Dynamical modeling is very different from statistical modeling.
Layman Lurker // January 17, 2009 at 7:08 pm |
Ray, thanks for your response. Still not sure what you mean by “data” to set these parameters. How much of the settings come from that predicted by physics? Are there any other methods to set parameters?
kim // January 17, 2009 at 7:08 pm |
Barton Paul Levenson at 6:33. Your criticism is correct. I do assume that the sun is driving current climate change. To what degree it is doing so, and how it is doing so, are presently unknown, and I agree my assumption may be incorrect. I’m constantly turning over Leif’s problem with hypersensitivity. We shall see.
==============================
len // January 17, 2009 at 7:44 pm |
ray,
i can’t disagree with anything you’ve said… EXCEPT
i said that the evidence is NOT all on one side…
i can see how that would be a disturbing thought… a little exclusionary. those were comments by someone else that i had issue with.
len
David B. Benson // January 17, 2009 at 8:25 pm |
len // January 17, 2009 at 1:02 pm — Climate models certainly are not in their infancy. You can readily check the facts by reading “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html
Review of above:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E7DF153DF936A35753C1A9659C8B63
as a starter.
Hank Roberts // January 17, 2009 at 8:30 pm |
http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/an-update-to-kiehl-and-trenberth-1997/
http://ams.confex.com/ams/89annual/techprogram/paper_145443.htm
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JD010613.shtml
http://ams.confex.com/ams/89annual/techprogram/paper_149295.htm
dhogaza // January 17, 2009 at 8:36 pm |
What’s the evidence on the other side, then?
Hank Roberts // January 17, 2009 at 8:39 pm |
Kim Stanley Robinson, speaking to Google:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-jz86gMiHw
Thoughtful, well documented, sources cited.
Good job by a respected writer.
lee // January 17, 2009 at 8:40 pm |
BPL says about kim:
“You seem to be starting with the conclusion you want and then looking for facts to confirm it.”
kim then says:
“To what degree it is doing so, and how it is doing so, are presently unknown, and I agree my assumption may be incorrect.”
BPL. you give km way too much credit. He isn’t looking for confirmatory facts. He is making up out of whole cloth mechanisms for which there is no evidence, and treating his imaginings as if they are confirmatory facts. And he just admitted it.
Hank Roberts // January 17, 2009 at 9:02 pm |
Teh kim is a bot or botlike signature on substantially identical postings seen many places, always write-only, lacking content, highly effective at distraction and energy absorbtion. Eschew.
Look again at the original post and the link there.
Robinson’s Google speech has much I’ve never come across before; recommended.
Example: the famous graphic of Napoleon’s march on Moscow –starting with 400,000 soldiers and returning with 10,000 — urging Google’s Graphics people to do as effective a presentation of carbon reduction.
Example: monocausotaxophilia, a word invented by Popper — people with a love of single causes that can explain anything.
Example: the economic system we have right now — physical reality isn’t effectively accounted for.
Much, much more.
kim // January 17, 2009 at 9:14 pm |
Hank, I’m honored, and Lee, imagination is useful in science. Also, what whole cloth mechanisms have I made up? Quick, if they’re right, I’d like precedence.
===========================
Ray Ladbury // January 17, 2009 at 9:33 pm |
Layman Lurker, CO2 sensitivity is an example of a forcing that must be evaluated empirically. Data going into the estimation include response of the climate to perturbations like volcanic eruptions, paleoclimate and some 20th century warming. All three favor a value around 3 degrees per doubling, but they have different tolarance limits. Validation is then done on subsequent warming, other volcanism and other data not in the calibration dataset. Does that help?
Most dynamical models do have some parameters that have to be set empirically. The difference with a statistical model is that in a dynamical model, you determine them with a calibration dataset and validate the model with independent data, while with a statistical model, the parameters are evaluated by a best fit to ALL the data and validation is via goodness of fit.
Hank Roberts // January 17, 2009 at 9:35 pm |
This is the “missing link” approach: claim something is missing and then insist that others explain it. Most familiar from the Darwin bots.
Clever, picking up the name to insert it in the subsequent text. But still the same pattern of information-free distraction. Anything to avoid the main topic and draw attention to kimself.
Loved the Holmes pastiche. Worth discussing.
Ray Ladbury // January 17, 2009 at 9:39 pm |
Len, since it is you who are claiming there is evidence on both sides, it is incumbent on you to produce the peer-reviewed studies that raise any serious questions about the consensus view. I know of none.
luminous beauty // January 17, 2009 at 9:49 pm |
len,
Real Climate has done a couple of informative posts on GCMs:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-models/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-models/
luminous beauty // January 17, 2009 at 11:26 pm |
Hank,
Great find with the KSR speech.
kim,
do take a peek. You might learn something.
Layman Lurker // January 18, 2009 at 12:56 am |
Thanks Ray. I interpret what you are saying to mean that not all parameters are set as predictions of physics. Some are derived empirically, and validated with independant data to ensure that derived values are consistent with reality. Let me know if I am off base.
len // January 18, 2009 at 12:59 am |
luminous beauty & dhogaza,
lb
thanks. nice links. very useful.
dh
nothing earth shattering here but of course you’ve seen the sun output correlation vs climate (temp) charts that have circulated around. there definitely appears to be some general correlation here.
but what i find more interesting, is to focus on the proxy temperature data alone – without making correlations at all. and the thing that jumps out to ( i think all of us – you included) is that things have been cycling warm/cold for at least the last 400,000 years. see link below. and it happens relatively quickly when going from cool to warm, and it takes somewhat longer going the other way. it is complex. i can’t help believe that we will be going back down again.
that’s all i had. it is possible that anthropogenic CO2 may keep us out of another ice age, but i wouldn’t be too sure.
http://home.austarnet.com.au/yours/Vostok%20Ice%20Core%20Global%20Tempertatures.gif
[Response: The primary cause of those up-and-down swings over the last 400,000 years (actually at least 3 million) is known: the changing amount, and distribution, of incoming sunlight due to changes in the orbit and tilt of the earth. We are indeed headed into cooling due to those factors, but not for about 30,000 years.
And those changes are not as rapid as you think. The "happens relatively quickly when going from cool to warm" takes typically 5,000 years or more, and with a total global temperature change of 5 or 6 deg.C (the temperature variation at Vostok is about double that for the globe as a whole), that means the sustained warming rate is about 0.001 deg.C/yr. The warming we're expecting over the next century is twenty times as fast.]
Ray Ladbury // January 18, 2009 at 1:59 am |
Layman Lurker, OK, that’s close. Let’s look at CO2 sensitivity. Physics tells us that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so we know raising CO2 will raise temperatures. We also know that the effect will be roughly logarithmic from the physics. What we don’t know is how much temperature will rise if we double CO2, because there are a lot of coupled feedbacks that we can’t analyze analytically. So physics gives us the form of the forcing–the way the equation looks, but we have to determine the equation empirically. It seems like a subtle distinction, but it’s important, actually.
Layman Lurker // January 18, 2009 at 6:06 am |
Many thanks Ray.
len // January 18, 2009 at 11:18 am |
ray,
i’m sorry, i don’t have access to any peer reviewed papers. does that totally discount my thoughts? did galileo have peer reviewed papers to justify his position? the more we think we know, the less aware we are of what we don’t. my only point in all of this is very simple. we are never as smart as we think. nature humbles us routinely. below is a summary of a paper you may be aware of regarding solar output changes… changes that haven’t been predicted… changes that aren’t (as far as i am aware) part of the current climate modeling (because these readings haven’t been routinely taken), but changes nonetheless, and changes that could have significant impact on climate. i don’t advocate a linear extrapolation of the data, as the authors have done, but short of any data that tells them how to forecast the future, it is a good zeroth order approach.
your thoughts?
one more thing. i’ve always known that i should trust my intuition -it has served me well when the totality of the science is not complete. my sense is, without sounding condescending, that the sun itself should be a very large variable in any modeling of the solar system’s weather (not just TSI). if it were not the case, predicting earth’s temperatures with our “well understood” models should be a breeze… maybe we should stay in touch, because i truly believe the day will come when there is a community “a hah!”, when we realize the flaw in our current modeling
.
William Livingston and Matthew Penn
National Solar Observatory, Tucson, AZ
Wednesday, Aug 27, 2008
We have observed spectroscopic changes in temperature sensitive molecular
lines, in the magnetic splitting of an Fe I line, and in the continuum
brightness of over 1000 sunspot umbrae from 1990-2005. All three
measurements show consistent trends in which the darkest parts of the
sunspot umbra have become warmer (45K per year) and their magnetic field
strengths have decreased (77 Gauss per year), independently of the normal
11-year sunspot cycle. A linear extrapolation of these trends suggests that
few sunspots will be visible after 2015.
Sunspots are cool dark regions on the solar surface with strong magnetic
fields. There have been few direct measurements of changes in the physical
parameters of sunspots, but here we present a study which shows that
sunspots are becoming warmer and have weaker magnetic fields. The number of
sunspots visible on the Sun normally shows an 11-year periodicity, and the
current sunspot cycle (cycle 23) had a maximum in 2001, and is entering a
minimum phase with few sunspots currently visible. Our data show that there
are additional changes occurring in sunspots, independent of the sunspot
cycle, and these trends suggest that sunspots will disappear completely.
Such an event would not be unprecedented, since during a famous episode from
1645-1715, known as the Maunder Minimum, the normal 11-year periodicity
vanished and there were virtually no sunspots visible on the solar surface
(Eddy 1976). Recent studies of the appearance rate and latitudinal drift of
sunspots (Hathaway et al., 2004) and of the solar magnetic field (Svalgard
etal, 2005) predict that the number of sunspots visible in future cycles
will be significantly reduced. Finally the occurrence of prolonged periods
with no sunspots is important to climate studies, since the Maunder Minimum
was shown to correspond with the reduced average global temperatures on the
Earth (Foukal et al., 1990).
The line depth of OH 1565.3 nm for individual spots. The upper trace is the
smoothed sunspot number showing the past and current sunspot cycles; the OH
line depth change seems to smoothly decrease independently of the sunspot
cycle. See full size image here
A linear fit to observed magnetic fields extrapolated to the minimum value
observed for umbral magnetic fields. See full size image here
Leif Svalgard noted on Solar Cylce 24 forum relative to this paper that
“There was a tiny pore on Aug 22nd, 2008. Bill Livingston measured its
magnetic field and tells me today that it was 1931 Gauss. You may verify for
yourself that that falls straight on his projected line. BTW, he has many
other data points now between the last data shown on the plot and this
latest one, and they also confirm the trend.”
Ian Forrester // January 18, 2009 at 4:15 pm |
Len, that paper was submitted to Nature where it was promptly turned down. If you know that it has been published elsewhere (apart from any discussions on the denier websites) please let us know.
I too use my intuition and when a paper is promptly refused publication I send it to the circular file cabinet on the floor. There are far too many papers actually published to spend time on unpublished ones.
Hank Roberts // January 18, 2009 at 4:25 pm |
Lee, you write
> i don’t have access to any peer reviewed papers
You have no library access at all? No town nearby? You know you can use Google Scholar where you’re sitting now without getting up?
Lack of access to any peer reviewed science is rare indeed. What’s your ISP doing to you?
You quote Svalgaard; you know he’s pointed out that even a sunspot minimum doesn’t predict great cooling, right?
If your mail isn’t screened, we could mail you some papers.
But I’d bet you’re missing something obvious, like a local library within walking or driving distance, or a bookmobile. Interlibrary loan is a wonderful service available almost everywhere.
You should look some things up. Let us know if you are free to do that. What you’re quoting is a mishmash from Svalgaard and Solanki and others, summed up by New Scientist a few years ago here:
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060920/20060920_13.html
——–excerpt-follows————
There is a dangerous flip side to this coin. If global warming does slow down or partially reverse with a sunspot crash, industrial polluters and reluctant nations could use it as a justification for turning their backs on pollution controls altogether, making matters worse in the long run. There is no room for complacency, Svalgaard warns: “If the Earth does cool during the next sunspot crash and we do nothing, when the sun’s magnetic activity returns, global warming will return with a vengeance.”
Hank Roberts // January 18, 2009 at 4:28 pm |
PS, here’s one of the studies done using old wine:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0168-583X(90)90486-E
Hank Roberts // January 18, 2009 at 5:58 pm |
PPS, if you find a library nearby, or if you can get Google Scholar working where you sit, this will lead you to some interesting work:
http://www.stsci.edu/stsci/meetings/lisa3/beckmanj.html
len // January 18, 2009 at 8:31 pm |
hank,
if you check my posts you will find that i am an environmentalist, and am in total support of minimizing our impact on the environment… all for reducing use of fossil fuels… all on board with the movement…
however,
i’m not on board with the exclusionary mindset of so many other GW fanantics. i’m not a global warming fanatic, and i think there is plenty of scientific room to discuss the possibility that the forcing functions that drive our climate are not going to be overwhelmed by CO2. is that not possible? you sound so overbearing it is embarrassing. i sure wouldn’t want a friend/acquaintance like you.
also, just because Nature doesn’t publish the paper, doesn’t mean it has no validity. isn’t it obvious that Hathaway and others are in a funk regarding cycle 24, and that our ability to predict the output of the sun is shoddy, and our ability to forecast the climate none better.
lighten up a little bit, you might find out that you aren’t as smart as you think.
len // January 18, 2009 at 8:49 pm |
hank/genius,
one more thing.
why don’t you enlighten us with your knowledge/theory regarding the last 400,000 years of earth climate history?
why have temperature risen to temps much similar to today’s in 4 separate cycles of 100,000 or so… expound not in context of earth’s orbit or earth’s tilt, but in the context of the big forcing function CO2. in your explanation, don’t forget to provide detail on how CO2 increases during those periods, which lagged the temperature increases, caused the warming trends. then, what is the mechanism for the lagging CO2 to cause the earth to cool again. these data would be most helpful. and if you are successful in explaining the phenomena, maybe you could write a paper, which i would gladly peer review, then i could post your paper here, to provide intelligent readers like yourself with more expert evidence of the global warming debacle that we are currently faced with.
thanks,
len
David B. Benson // January 18, 2009 at 9:52 pm |
len // January 18, 2009 at 8:31 pm — Climatology is not a easy subject, but no, there are no other ‘forcing functions’ which are going to save us from the effects of our folly in greatly increasing atmospheric caron dioxide. I suggest reading David Archer’s “The Long Thaw”. You might also care to read “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html
Review of above:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E7DF153DF936A35753C1A9659C8B63
dhogaza // January 18, 2009 at 10:11 pm |
Len, with all due respect, your last comment regarding ice age cycles makes it clear that you are entirely ignorant of what climate science has to say on the matter.
Your statement is a string of strawmen that has no basis in reality regarding the claims of climate science.
You’ll get no explanation for “what is the mechanism for the lagging CO2 to cause the earth to cool again” because there is no such mechanism, because “lagging CO2 doesn’t cause the earth to cool again”, and no scientist claims that it does.
If you want to argue that climate science is wrong, you’re going to have to learn what climate science claims, first.
Hank Roberts // January 18, 2009 at 10:35 pm |
Len, you wrote
> i don’t have access to any peer
> reviewed papers. does that totally
> discount my thoughts? did galileo
> have peer reviewed papers ….
If you truly lack access to any peer reviewed papers, please explain the problem.
len // January 18, 2009 at 11:54 pm |
thanks david,
i did take a read, and will continue to do so – there is an interesting history there.
what troubles me is this: if we assume that human produced CO2 is now the big driver regarding earth’s climate, then what if we are successful in removing the CO2 we are now spewing into the atmosphere? then are we not back on trend of cycling in and out of major glaciations? and the glacial periods tend to last much longer than the interglacials… do they not?
so i guess the question is a philosophical one: it seems apparent now that CO2 can increase atmospheric temperatures, it is also apparent that the earth, all on its own, can cycle in/out of major glaciations… so if we can agree that these two statements above are true, then what do we do? are we trying to release just the right amount of CO2 and other gases to perfectly counter major climate change or are we hoping to eliminate all greenhouse gases and hope that we can survive earth’s natural destructive climate change history?
i’m not being facetious here… really… just trying to advance the philosophical discussion.
thanks,
len
David B. Benson // January 19, 2009 at 1:21 am |
len // January 18, 2009 at 11:54 pm — Do read David Archer’s “The Long Thaw”.
Now suppose we remove the excess CO2. In that case, the next possible chance at a stade (massive ice sheets) is starting in about 20,000+ years. With the excess CO2 left in, but no more added, maybe that attempt will be skipped and so the nest stade is around 50,000 years from now. The orbital forcing data is firm about these dates.
With that, would you wish to rephrase you question(s)?
Ray Ladbury // January 19, 2009 at 1:30 am |
Len, At present, we are in no danger of an ice age, while the warming climate does threaten the infrastructure needed to support a global population of 9 billion. It may be that at some point, humans understand climat well enough that geoengineering will be possible. We’re not there yet. Where we are in our understanding is that we know the current course represents an uncontrolled experiment–indeed, if we trigger certain turning points, an uncontrollable experiment.
In my mind, climate change is part of a larger issue–building a sustainable economy. That’s the only way I see our civilization surviving long enough for us to get to the geoengineering stage.
Hank Roberts // January 19, 2009 at 1:36 am |
Len, the problem is the rate of change.
You need to start with some basic information.
What do you have available? Can you see the book link David pointed out to you? That answers your questions.
Douglas Watts // January 19, 2009 at 2:17 am |
our ability to predict the output of the sun is shoddy, and our ability to forecast the climate none better.
this is a logical fallacy.
Douglas Watts // January 19, 2009 at 2:22 am |
It may be that at some point, humans understand climate well enough that geoengineering will be possible. We’re not there yet. In my mind, climate change is part of a larger issue–building a sustainable economy.
Ray:
Building a sustainable economy is geoengineering.
It’s just front of pipe/pollution prevention technology and practices rather than “end of pipe” treatment.
And it’s not escapist.
lee // January 19, 2009 at 2:45 am |
Len, if you don’t have any access to the peer reviewed literature, then how in the hell do you have a basis to make statements (in contradiction to many, many people who do have such access) such as “i think there is plenty of scientific room to discuss the possibility that the forcing functions that drive our climate are not going to be overwhelmed by CO2.”
What is the rational, sciwentific basis of your belief?
len // January 19, 2009 at 2:49 pm |
lee,
my rationale lies in earth’s history… not in the minutia of the coupled effects of this or that. the earth has been cycling in and out of glacial periods for more than 2 million years… what makes us so utterly confident that 380ppm of CO2 can reverse that now… i will admit that i am very suspicious when i hear experts claiming they know that this is the end of that trend. many many times over in scientific history experts have been wrong. it seems to me that this may be another example. when the inertia becomes so great that intellectual men can’t see the possibility of a different opinion… watch out! the market might soon crash.
just for fun… what is the global average temperatre predictions between 2000 and 20020?
are we on track?
P. Lewis // January 19, 2009 at 4:51 pm |
It’s not today’s CO2 levels that are suggested to put off the next glaciation (although I think there’s some speculation that they might delay the inevitable a tad), it’s the BAU scenario.
dhogaza // January 19, 2009 at 5:01 pm |
You’ve never heard that from climate science experts.
Again, you are totally ignorant of what climate science is telling us. You’re arguing against a strawman of your own imagination.
Go get an education on the basics and get back to us, OK?
Barton Paul Levenson // January 19, 2009 at 6:41 pm |
len writes:
Yes, and in 20,000 years, we’d be in for another ice age.
I’m willing to deal with that starting, say, 19,000 years from now.
Barton Paul Levenson // January 19, 2009 at 6:43 pm |
len writes:
150 years of climatology research.
David B. Benson // January 19, 2009 at 7:22 pm |
P. Lewis // January 19, 2009 at 4:51 pm — The orbital forcings in the future make it quite clear that the attempt at a stade in 20,000+ years might fail without any AGW; such minor forcings have failed during MIS 11 for example.
The first solid forcing is in about another 50,000 years.
len // January 19, 2009 at 10:07 pm |
dhogaza,
i’m sorry that i’m totally ignorant. but to enlighten me with your knowledge on the subject, would you mind getting me up to speed on the following?
1.) how do we explain the fact that CO2 lags the temp record by about 800 years? amplification is one thing, causation another.
2.) do you totally discount svensmark’s work? cosmic rays/clouds
3.) can you explain the global temperature decreases that occurred between 1940 and 1975, as CO2 steadily increased, without addressing solar variability?
4.) what portion of the .7C temperature rise over the past 100 years do you allocate to CO2.?
land use? solar variability?
5.)in the last ten years CO2 has risen by 20ppm. temps have fallen about .5C. do the models predict this?
soon i will be enlightened enough, that i will be able to ameliorate my ignorance on the back of your wisdom.
please help,
len
[Response: Perhaps you wouldn't be called ignorant if you didn't show such obvious ignorance. Really, I'm trying to get you to realize that the things you think you know -- just ain't so.
1.) CO2 lags the temp record by about 800 years during ice ages. Glaciations and deglaciations are triggered by Milankovitch cycles, and the temperature increase triggers CO2 increase but it takes centuries to happen. But the CO2 causes temperature change just as surely as the temperature change causes CO2 change; they're both cause and both effect. Modern CO2 increase is caused by burning fossil fuels -- but CO2 increase still causes warming.
2.) Yes.
3.) The levelling off of temperature mid-century is mainly due to massive emissions of sulfate aerosols, which scatter sunlight back to space and therefore cool the climate. Temperatures did not decrease between 1940 and 1970, only for a very brief period from about 1945 to 1951 (see this), because the cooling effect of aerosols was offset by the warming effect of greenhouse gases.
4.) Just a rough guess: greenhouse gases and land use +0.9, solar +0.2, aerosols -0.4.
5.) Where did you get that number? This is why people call you ignorant. The last 10 years is from 1999 to the present; the GISS annual average 1999 is 0.33, for 2008 it's 0.44, an increase of +0.11, and the linear regression trend line indicates an increase over 10 years of +0.18.
And as I've tried to make clear, again and again and again and again, temperature shows noise as well as signal, so statements about warming and cooling have to include the probable error due to random noise. As has also been pointed out again and again, 10 years isn't long enough.]
Ray Ladbury // January 19, 2009 at 10:27 pm |
Len, I’ll take a stab at this:
1)In a normal cycle of glacial/interglacial, the forcing that starts to melt the ice is increased insolation–google Milankovitch cycles. The only source of CO2 is natural–the oceans as they heat up and CO2 becomes less soluble, peat bogs as the ice thaws. That takes time. However, ultimately, things do heat up and the greenhouse gasses cause the warming period to go on a lot longer than it would otherwise.
2)Two problems with Svensmark’s work: a)GCR fluxes aren’t really increasing as we know from satellite data (e.g. upsets in memories) and neutron fluxes; and b)he doesn’t have a credible mechanism. There’s really another–it doesn’t invalidate what we already know about greenhouse gasses.
3)You will not that the end of the pause in warming (not really a cooling) coincides with the passage of clean air legislation in most industrial countires. Sulfate aerosols explain a lot of this epoch. Indeed, that was what several climate scientists worried about at the time.
4)It is almost all due to increased CO2. Solar forcing is flat since ~1950, and land use shouldn’t affect the oceans and poles, but we see warming there, too.
5)And there’s more CO2 in the air tonight than there was this morning and yet it will be cooler. 11 years ago we had a big El Nino. Last year a big La Nina. Don’t be fooled by weather. Climate is a long-term phenomenon. Look at this post:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/12/31/stupid-is-as-stupid-does/
dhogaza // January 19, 2009 at 10:33 pm |
Len, the answers to your questions are all easily accessible on the internet. Go click on the primer links at real climate, for starters.
There’s no reason for me to do your homework for you. Your ignorance is not my problem.
And if you want to claim that my unwillingness to educate you is proof that climate science is wrong … feel free!
JCH // January 19, 2009 at 10:45 pm |
If the Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble had been burning 86 million barrels of crude oil a day, plus coal and natural gas, it may of only lagged something like 798 years.
David B. Benson // January 19, 2009 at 11:20 pm |
len // January 19, 2009 at 10:07 pm — At the peak of the Eemian interglacial, temperature and CO2 peaked together, +- 50 years, this from Vostok ice core.
Little Ice Age is even more interesting, with CO2 declining from 180 ppm to 260 ppm ‘leading’ temperatures dwon.
For much more on the Holocene, I strongly recommend you read W.F. Ruddiman’s “Plows, Plagues and Petroleum”. It is well done, largely correct (IMO) and will clear your head of the cobwebs formed by reading misinformation (AKA denialist) web sites.
Sekerob // January 19, 2009 at 11:53 pm |
David B. Benson // January 19, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Flip? From 260 to 180 ppm I’d thought leading the temperature decline.
len // January 20, 2009 at 12:52 am |
ray/david,
i really appreciate the inputs. seriously. good stuff. the aerosols i didn’t know about. makes sense. as far as actual temperature readings… i see numbers all over the place (last 10 years) so i’m not sure what is absolute. regardless, we’ve come a long way… from those tree dwellers 55 million years ago. can we make another 55.
David B. Benson // January 20, 2009 at 1:14 am |
Sekerob // January 19, 2009 at 11:53 pm — Oops! From 280 ppm to 260 ppm and then back to 280 ppm in 1850 CE.
I suppose its been one of those days. Thanks for noticing my typo.
Paul Middents // January 20, 2009 at 1:31 am |
Len,
People who ignore the shift key and the value of capitol letters in their discourse do not raise their credibility as serious inquirers. You read like a teener on twitter.
You have been given much patient response. I will give you one more reference to think about:
http://www.cspg.org/conventions/Gussow2008/abstracts/003.pdf
This is a conference summary by Judith Lean of a very important paper recommended to us by Hank.
I don’t pretend to understand all the implications of this paper. I hope to give it a try and offer it up for help from the more knowledgeable.
You have been ushered into the front room of climate science. Ask more specific questions now based on your reading and people will continue to pay attention to you.
Demonstrating a flat learning curve gets you a place on the kill file.
Paul
tamino // January 20, 2009 at 1:42 am |
Clearly Len had received some misinformation and some spin. But he seems to be open to correct information. And we all have a lot to learn; this isn’t the front room, that’s three doors down (at RealClimate). So give the guy a break.
len // January 20, 2009 at 12:39 pm |
Paul,
I got my shift key fixed. :)
Thanks for the link to the Jundith Lean paper. That is very interesting stuff.
len // January 20, 2009 at 10:54 pm |
Eric McLamb posted a new article to on ecology.com yesterday.
It is worth a read.
http://ecology.com/ecology-today/2009/01/19/abrupt-changes-in-climate-cooling-and-warming-are-cyclical-say-scientists/
Paul Middents // January 21, 2009 at 11:08 pm |
Len,
I’ll try to keep a civil tongue in my head.
The Eric McLamb post you link to is peculiar. I don’t think there is any new information in it. Some of the information is similar to a 1997 Science News post.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1997/11/971114070632.htm
Gerard Bond is quoted in both. Bond was a highly respected paleoclimatologist who passed away in 2005.
http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/news/2005/story07-11-05.html
Bond’s work has been misused by some in the deny and delay community to support persistent climate cycles as an alternative to AGW.
What was your “take away” from McLamb’s post?
len // January 22, 2009 at 10:49 pm |
Paul,
I think it is rehashed old news, qualitatively interesting, quantitatively lacking. Thanks for the links. They were useful.
Here is another old paper I came across today. Maybe you can shed some light on it. It dates to 1987, and the author (Shirley, Columbia University) makes a crude link between solar intertial motion and solar output… then maps the inertial motion of the sun as a function of time over the last several hundred years. It might be worth a look.
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1987SoPh..110..191F/0000208.000.html
Hank Roberts // January 22, 2009 at 11:57 pm |
Len, just out of curiousity, where did you come across mention of that one? What did they say about it? Do you think you found it at a reliable source?
One way I think is helpful to assess:
Did they help you find the subsequent citations to the paper?
I recollect this one, and recall extensive use of it to argue things that proved not to work out. But I’m a guy on a blog; look into it a bit for yourself. Here’s what I’d do. Paste the title into Google Scholar to find the actual original publication (rather than the brief abstract). Scholar gives a link to recent and to citing papers. See what was made of that one.
(Beware the citing article published in some fisheries journal; Scholar has no “Wise Results” button.)
Do look at the citing papers; here’s one citing Fairbridge and extending the work to predict solar minimum at 2007.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.newast.2008.04.005
Oops.
Just sayin’, the way to evaluate an old scientific paper is to look at the subsequent work citing it and see if it led to anything interesting and productive. Lots of people, as I recall, did try for quite a while with that notion.
But I’m just an amateur reader, I’ve only seen this stuff go by, mostly without reference to the actual science. I recommend looking up the science.
Search for +fairbridge +climate and you’ll find this is one of the favorite pillars of uncertainty and doubt. Also, paste the title into the Scholar search box and you’ll be able to look up the original and see what subsequent papers have cited it.
Check the citing papers.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Fairbridge+Shirley+%22Solar+Physics%22+1987&btnG=Search
From what I recollect, another way to weight a paper is by comparing what you see searching Google Scholar
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?sourceid=Mozilla-search&q=+%2Bbarycentre+%2Bsvalgaard
Look at that one, and then compare what you see with the same terms, searching Google.
If you get a handful of scientific papers from Scholar, and a great many familiar climate-bluster-and-argument sites with ordinary Google, that may indicate it’s overhyped.
Again, I don’t know where you got it, but, um, I’m guessing from having seen it around.
Paul Middents // January 23, 2009 at 6:58 am |
Len,
What Hank says.
Why did you give me a cite that you now admit is rehashed old news and then follow that with one that is even older and less interesting?
I started this with a reference to Lean and Rind’s recent, important work.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2008/Lean_Rind.html
Moreover, this work is connected to the original subject of this post by Tamino and closely related to this one:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/known-factors/
Way up post you said this:
“however i find the correlation of solar output (as it relates to sunspot data) over the last ~400 years with climate on earth to be compelling. i’m not saying ‘causal’, but very compelling, and worth more than just the casual “just coincidence” i often read regarding these data.”
Solar influence is not ignored in paleoclimatology. It explains a lot. It just doesn’t explain the recent warming. What do you think does explain it? Hint: read Lean and Rind. Let’s see the derivative of your learning curve go from zero to plus.
len // January 23, 2009 at 11:59 am |
Hank,
Thanks for the links. They were useful.
I came across the paper when perusing at Springerlink.com; I found it interesting because I recognized the names as being respected scientists… and I’ve been trying to find reference (or really predictions) for our current Cycle 23, 24.
I worked in modeling for 20 years, albeit, in a slightly different field. I worked in reentry heating environments and the effects on aerospace materials, and also worked/coordinated with nuclear physicists on a variety of topics (NSWC, Los Alamos Labs, Sandia). They were the best scientific modelers on the planet in their respective fields. What I learned from that experience may have application in other fields, as often times these types of experiences do have analogies in other disciplines.
And in essence here is my “take away”. Our models were improving all of the time, and sometimes matching data quite well. In smaller experiments you could replicate individual contributions to the larger event quite well. But many many times, the models were not flexible enough to accurately predict response, or to explain unexpected phenomena. They were useful tools nonetheless, getting better all of the time, but everyone in the business agreed that the only sure thing was measuring the data during the real event. That data was invaluable and helped us improve our tools.
When conditions were repeatable, the models were excellent. The difficulty came when trying to extrapolate to different conditions or when all of the forcing functions were not accounted for… I’m sure you know what challenges these issues can bring.
So back to Cycle 23, 24. I’ve been trying to find earlier (preferably pre cycle 23) papers that might have predicted a solar minimum… and from that, lots of other things have fallen out.
I’ve provided this background so that you can see where I am coming from, so to speak. As I’ve said before, I’m all for mitigating human impact to the environment. And also, I’m not sold on current climate modeling in full – we often don’t know what we don’t know, so we think we know all.
Back to Shirley’s paper… he did predict a minima about now… although I’ll admit the evidence is not complete.
Len
dhogaza // January 23, 2009 at 1:52 pm |
Scientists know better, and since you claim to have spent 20 years working with scientists, YOU know better.
So why did you say this?
More typical is the denialist position: we don’t know everything, therefore we know nothing, therefore GCMs are useless.
len // January 23, 2009 at 2:46 pm |
dhogaza,
I say this because it specifically applies. All too many individuals on boths sides of the climate debate seem to be staunchly opposed to genuinely open discussion. By the fact that you use the term “denialist” puts you in that category, categorically. A denialist must be someone who denies what we all know to be true absolutely. Right? It leaves no room for error on your part.
dhogaza // January 23, 2009 at 3:12 pm |
Well, you’re free to hold your own beliefs. The same is said by those who believe that evolution is false, creationism true; HIV doesn’t cause AIDS; and the earth is flat.
P. Lewis // January 23, 2009 at 3:29 pm |
I thought one of the reasons for using ensemble runs was …
len // January 23, 2009 at 3:44 pm |
dhogaza,
Please don’t put me in the creationist camp; I’m coming around on flat earth too. :)
I hope our answer on the climate will come subtly. I see one of two possible knock-out punches that I hope we never see.
1.) Earth continues to warm while solar output decreases (over decades).
or
2.) Earth cools while CO2 rises (over decades).
In case 1 we are all losers.
In case 2 we are all temporary winners.
cce // January 23, 2009 at 3:50 pm |
Len, I have a summary of solar issues:
http://cce.890m.com/solar-cosmic-rays
And a section on attribution
http://cce.890m.com/attributing-mankind/
Hank Roberts // January 23, 2009 at 4:40 pm |
> temporary winners
Ocean pH change won’t slow down, no win there.
Have you read Svalgaard at solarcycle24.com?
Paul Middents // January 23, 2009 at 4:42 pm |
Len,
You are beating a long dead horse. Climate modelers “are not sold in full on their models”. Climate modelers do actually have a pretty good handle on “what they don’t know”. I certainly have never heard one claim to “know it all”.
Lean and Rind point out some pretty specific problems with the models based on their analysis of the temperature record. They look very specifically at solar insolation and make a pretty convincing empirical case that its contribution to the temperature trend is a factor of ten below anthropogenic influences.
Do you think you are the first engineer to arrive on the scene ready to instruct us from a background in some form of dynamic or statistical modeling? John Mashey, a frequent and respected contributor to the better climate blogs, provides the best guidance I have ever read for those really interested in learning vice “philosophizing”:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/john_mashey_on_how_to_learn_ab.php
I will give you credit for working at the cutting edge and with some remarkable folks in the nuclear weapons field. They were confronted with a serious problem when the test ban treaty was signed. They could no longer observe and measure the effects of actual nuclear explosions. This did not prevent them from advancing the design and certifying the continuing reliability of our nuclear arsenal based on the results of imperfect and incomplete models. I have some familiarity from a user standpoint based on 15 strategic deterrent submarine patrols (1967 – 1980) and another 11 years planning operations, training crews and maintaining the weapons and submarines.
cce, great summary. Thanks for your efforts. I have drawn on them often.
Hank Roberts // January 23, 2009 at 4:44 pm |
(re solarcycle24, if you stay in the ham radio section — Solar Cycle 24 Main Discussion III– the rule is no global warming talk, which keeps the noise down and allows serious attention to what the sun is doing per se, because that matters for ham radio propagation)
dhogaza // January 23, 2009 at 4:59 pm |
Indeed they’re open about it, and that openness leads more informed denialist types to shout out “since they admit that there’s uncertainty in modeling cloud feedbacks, these feedbacks must be negative!” etc etc.
Len – no one who actually pays attention to what the modelers say about the strengths and weaknesses of their models would ever make the statement you’ve made.
Which brings us to two possibilities:
1. You’ve not bothered to find out what’s said about models, in which case you’re arguing from a position of personal ignorance.
2. You have, and you’re not being honest.
Hopefully it’s #1. That’s more easily correctable than #2.
luminous beauty // January 23, 2009 at 5:28 pm |
len,
If known forcing functions can account for all of the response within the limits of error, how much response from net unknown forcing functions is it reasonable to expect?
len // January 24, 2009 at 2:43 am |
Paul,
I worked with SLBMs as well. SSP. Your comments on the nuclear effort is dead-on. I’m impressed.
Len
len // January 24, 2009 at 2:47 am |
luminous beauty,
What are the error bands?
len // January 24, 2009 at 3:11 am |
dhogaza,
Peace.
Point taken. Let’s leave it there. Hopefully the discussion can continue from both sides without labeling. The terms Denialists and Global Warming Fanatics both rub many of us the wrong way.
len // January 24, 2009 at 3:14 am |
cce,
Thanks. Good links.
Hank,
Yes, Thanks.
Hank Roberts // January 24, 2009 at 3:18 am |
Len, just for, um, perspective, add to Dhog’s list
” … or you’re new here; you know how that can go. Relax and take your time working into it, and watch out for buzzwords, some of’em sting.”
You will find many good climate science coming from sources associated with the Navy.from other
Hank Roberts // January 24, 2009 at 3:27 am |
> what are the error bands
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/FAQ/fig/FAQ-2.1_Fig-2.png
“… The thin black line attached to each coloured bar represents the range of uncertainty for the respective value. (Figure adapted from Figure 2.20 of this report.)
Some are very wide, some not. You can look at the three earlier reports and see how they’ve changed.
The IPCC — particularly the FAQ pages — is the place to look along with the basic links at RC (“Start here”); the IPCC groups don’t do research, they pull together research and present it, every few years. Much as is done in many areas of science, that get less public attention.
For anything before their last report, everything else is echos; for anything since, it’s news.
A start, the chart above is from this page:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/FAQ/wg1_faq-2.1.html
poke around on the site:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/FAQ/wg1_faq-3.1.html
This will look familiar, but it’s a very new update of a fairly old image:
http://chriscolose.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/kiehl4.jpg?w=480&h=350
Chris’s site has a lot of good information
Ray Ladbury // January 24, 2009 at 3:43 am |
Len says, “A denialist must be someone who denies what we all know to be true absolutely. Right? ”
Well, I would say that is not a very useful definition, since we know nothing with certainty. Rather, I would say that a denialist is one who takes a position opposite to overwhelming evidence.
1)There is overwhelming evidence that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
2)There is overwhelming evidence that it accounts for ~7 degrees out of the 33 degrees of greenhouse warming on Earth.
3)There is overwhelming evidence that humans have increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
4)There is overwhelming evidence that the planet is warming.
Deny any of those, and I think it puts you in the denialist camp as surely as denying that apes descended from a common ancestor. We do know what we do know.
We also know a lot of things with high confidence. One of them is climate sensitivity to doubling of CO2. There is a whole lot of evidence that shows that it’s around 3 degrees per doubling, and a whole lot more that shows it’s very unlikely to be less than 2. There are only 2 ways out of that:
1)Everything we think we know about climate is wrong–and that seems to be contra-indicated by the success of the field.
2)Some magical negative feedback comes along to save us–and there is no evidence at all suggesting that.
So, for someone to say that climate science is all wrong without coming up with an alternative theory is unscientific to say the least, and since it requires denying a whole helluva lot of evidence, I wouls say denialist is pretty descriptive. On the other hand, for those who believe in that magic negative feedback, I’d settle for calling them imaginative.
Paul Middents // January 24, 2009 at 5:58 am |
Len,
Rant warning.
I follow a few of the reality based climate blogs. I respond rarely. You seem to be a possibly intelligent fellow who has wandered into a reality based blog with some baggage picked up around the web, reinforced perhaps by your political leaning. I can’t say for sure on the latter. Folks who protest about being environmentalists but just can’t buy the stuff the climate modelers are saying tend to have a bit of right rudder on.
If you really worked with SSP (Special Projects in my day) then you have had a nodding acquaintance with a reality based community. An even more reality based community was Naval Reactors. The reality in both those places was that nothing was absolute. The system had error bars. It had been designed to withstand most of the things a creative sailor could f**k up and the only thing that got you in terminal trouble was failing to report your screw ups, lying or failing to learn from your mistakes. It’s a system that has worked pretty well so far (50+ years).
My impression of the climate science community is that they, by and large, adhere to much of what we strived for in the nuclear submarine/nuclear weapons business. DaveA , who litters this blog with nonsense thinks otherwise based on his extensive experience in the British nuclear arms control movement. TCO who claims to have his “union card” is skeptical but not as willfully ignorant as DaveA. None of those climate scientists are getting rich telling us what we don’t want hear. In spite of what TCO thinks about Michael Mann, most of the good guys admit when they have missed the mark and move on.
I’m not sure what you learned from your experience with SSPO and I’m less than convinced that you are learning anything on this blog. As we used to say on the underwater telephone when trying to find out if anyone was listening and where they might be—“Gertrude Check, Over”.
len // January 24, 2009 at 7:34 am |
Ray,
“for someone to say that climate science is all wrong”, Clever.
Come on Ray… I never said that. Speaking of imagination…
len // January 24, 2009 at 8:33 am |
All,
It’s been nice. Thanks. Sincerely.
This is a hot issue of course, the planet is at stake. Many of you have helped direct me to useful links, I’m grateful.
I’m going to say this once, and get out, because there is no need for disagreement to dominate what should be an exchange of thoughts.
To be clear, again, I’m all for reducing CO2 emmissions and all other pollutants in general. It is the prudent thing to do and I’m an environmentalist. Done. Let’s clean it up. Then it doesn’t matter who is right and wrong. Did everyone read this paragraph?
Also, as a fellow human, I read and think about what I’ve read, over and over, trying to come to a comfortable understanding of the facts. If it were just as simple as saying, other people are working on it, so why don’t I just accept that and get on with driving my kids to soccer, and focus more on navigating the recession… and so on, – I would. But, like most of us, this topic causes me to worry and to be more curious.
So at this point in my journey through threads and papers, I’m personally not yet convinced of the state of the science – in full. That doesn’t mean I largely disgaree with the state of the science, just the opposite. But I do think that nature can humble us, over and over again, so I am not fully convinced of the predicitons a century out and beyond. I understand there has been tremendous progress. Earth’s climate history casts a huge vote in my mind that says things are extremely complex and it would be within the realm of possibility to be fooled by our models, however refined we may think they are.
This alone may make me a denialist… and if so, in your vernacular, then I can’t change that.
Evidence is the best convincer. I don’t know the answer to this question, so I am not being clever here. If we were to track back in time to 1998, and site the prediction of the “approved” models, with all of the error bands applied +/ -, would the trend of the last 10 years have been captured within the error bands? If the answer is yes, then I’ll breathe easier, and feel a little more comfortable about our predictive tools. If the answer is no, then that would suggest that we haven’t captured something important.
[Response: Look at this.
Now ask yourself: where did you get the idea that models did not accord perfectly with what's happened since 1998? It sure wasn't from anybody who knows what the model results are.
Could it be that there's a concerted effort to spread misinformation? Could it be that a lot of people are trying to cause fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and that you fell for their propaganda? Could it be that the people who talk about how computer models are so unreliable and such a failure are either liars, or ignorant as hell?
Doesn't that worry you?]
len // January 24, 2009 at 12:34 pm |
Let’s see. -.4 to +.6 over 10 years. That would about cover it.
len // January 24, 2009 at 12:39 pm |
You didn’t read the post accurately. I never said “models did not accord perfectly with what happened since 1998″, I was asking the question. You’ve answered it. There were large prediction bands and the results were within the bands. Enough said.
deech56 // January 24, 2009 at 12:59 pm |
Len
Thanks for the explanation – I can see where you’re coming from. Tamino posted information about the last 10 years (kind of a short time), but there is much more on model verification. The IPCC WG1 report is a good start – FAQ (I am sure you’ve seen the chart in FAQ 9.2) to the full report, (Chapter 8) with references. Hansen 2006 and the associated discussion in RealClimate will also yield information. A search of references describing the predictions and effects of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption – temperature changes, circulation – also show the utility of models.
Much of what the models will tell us are regional changes, changes in precipitation, etc. The basic question is still: what is the climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling? If it’s 3 degrees (plus or minus), we know that there will be major changes. There are lots of places to find out how this number is calculated, and a lot of information is historical – not just forward-looking models.
If I am steering you in the wrong direction, others can correct me – this is a smart crowd here. It’s also a crowd that has heard old arguments imported by new posters – they are a bit sensitized (as an immunologist, I know how that goes), so don’t get too hung up in the response. Just say, “Hey, I’m not a microbe.”
Nature can surprise us, but not all surprises are pleasant.
“The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks.” – Wallace S. Broecker
Ray Ladbury // January 24, 2009 at 1:28 pm |
Len, It was not my intent to imply that you contend all of climate science is wrong. I don’t put you in the denialist camp yet. Frankly, you don’t know enough about the issue yet to be in the denialist camp, and your seeming willingness to learn (who can tell on the Internet) holds out hope.
There are two sides in this debate–science and anti-science. Or if you prefer, the side with the evidence and the side that ignores the evidence. You can tell the former because they publish on the subject in peer-reviewed journals.
You say you have reservations about the climate models. OK. But can you understand that there are some aspects of the model that are extremely likely to be undermined as we learn more. The models simply do not work with a low CO2 sensitivity, and the models work too well to be totally wrong. It is rather difficult to understand how a completely wrong model would nail the effect of Mt. Pinatubo, for instance.
You claim that as long as you support a greener environment, the truth about anthropogenic climate change doesn’t matter, but it does. It matters because it is the truth. It matters because we are on the verge of completely retooling our energy infrastructure due to peak oil, and we need to know whether to dig up the coal or leave that carbon sequestered int the ground. It matters because we need to develop policies that address the cause of the warming.
Truth does matter.
dhogaza // January 24, 2009 at 1:43 pm |
Len, you could’ve googled this yourself weeks ago without bothering all of us with the standard denialist talking point crap that you so liberally posted here.
You could’ve figured this out yourself with telling us that climate scientists think they understand everything and are unwilling to admit that there are new things that need to be learned about climate.
On and on.
Maybe in the future you’ll spend time reading what scientists actually have to say about climate first, before proclaiming that you think that they’re probably wrong blah-dy-blah-blah.
David B. Benson // January 24, 2009 at 8:00 pm |
len // January 24, 2009 at 3:11 am — Instead, how about the labels Misinformed and Informed? Learn enough to start being among the informed. I suggest starting with W.F. Ruddiman’s popular “Plows, Plagues and Petroleum”. Reading comments here you’ll find that I also suggest other starter resources.
len // January 24, 2009 at 11:35 pm |
Paul,
I’ll make this quick. You’re right. I’ve got to move on. It is precisely my experience with SSP (not if ) and the labs that makes me naturally suspect the ability to model to new conditions. If you’ve followed the NNSA warhead programs/refurbs, you’ll note that the advanced physics models have been approved to help certify nuclear warhead designs that are the same as the original ones – that were certified originally with UGTs ( with very few perturbations). The reason, lack of confidence in the modeling to do so. There is nothing that replaces what you can learn from the actual event. I suspect our climate system to be much the same.
Earlier someone noted evolution… and the fact that, within all reasonable doubt – we have evolved. The fossil record proves it! There is absolutely no question that this is the case. What reasonable scientist could disagree?
However, if someone told you that they could predict how we were going to evolve into the future – you would be much more suspect.
Highly nonlinear events are just that.
dhogaza // January 25, 2009 at 1:33 am |
Well, obviously we can’t predict future random mutation events.
I fail to see the analogy with the climate response to increasing CO2 concentrations though.
TCO // January 25, 2009 at 2:07 am |
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Interrogative. Over.
Hank Roberts // January 25, 2009 at 4:14 am |
Here’s an anticipation of the CO2 result, a drop in the total fuel burned in 2008 by ocean shipping (Port of Los Angeles), for your consideration:
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/01/la-area-port-traffic-collapses-in.html
Ray Ladbury // January 25, 2009 at 11:53 am |
Len, you fail to understand the level at which climate models are operating. They are not attempting to predict when a hurricane will form and obliterate New Orleans next time. Rather they are looking to elucidate the gross behavior changes that will result given changes in energetics. This is well within the capabilities of modern GCMs for well understood forcings like greenhouse gasses.
To use the evolution metaphor, it’s at the level of saying that given future changes in our environment we will evolve so as to be suited to that environment or we will become extinct.
len // January 25, 2009 at 12:26 pm |
Hank,
I hope you are right.
TCO // January 25, 2009 at 1:10 pm |
Ray, IANAE, and these are general noodling things over thoughts. But I don’t think you are either.
1. It’s not clear to me that a GCM as opposed to an EBM will really give useful independant validation of CO2 warming extent. It’s just that the system itself is sooooo complex. And the GCM only shows one realization and wanders away with time, and has so many knobs and such. This is not to say that AGW does not occur, just that GCM research may be non-additive. I mean I think string theory is not physics either. It is possible for people to spend a bunch of time on something and it to be a blind alley or a waste of time.
2. Unclear to me that good replication of the effect of a volcano perturbation shows that the model will properly handle CO2 versus time. They are different forcings, mechanisms, time scales, etc. And the inherent system has a lot of complexity to it.
Ray Ladbury // January 25, 2009 at 3:33 pm |
TCO, I’ve never claimed to be an expert on climate models, although I have looked into the subject and have some experience with statistical and dynamical modeling.
My perspective is this–yes the models are complex, and there are many unknowns. However, the goal is not predictive, but rather than illuminative. And in this case, what we are trying to illuminate is the effect of an increase in a well mixed, long-lived greenhouse gas. What is more, the GCMs are not the only tool we have in this task. We also have the paleoclimate, and the signature of such a forcing sticks out like a sore thumb in both the climate models and the paleoclimate. You really can’t get an Earthlike climate at Earth’s orbit without such a forcing.
So, we know with very high confidence that CO2 has to provide significant forcing. The only question is whether there is some negative feedback that somehow negates added forcing (from ANY cause) once you get above our current temperature range. There is zero evidence favoring this. The paleoclimate would argue against it, as would Occam’s razor.
As to the successes of the climate models, the reproduction of responses to perturbations is merely the most dramatic. They also reproduce the gross paleoclimate and the 20th century warming trend pretty well. My experience has been that a complicated system isn’t likely to get things wrong by accident. Moreover, you need to remain cognizant of the fact these are dynamical models. There aren’t really that many knobs you are free to turn. They are constrained by independent evidence to narrow values.
Anthropogenic climate change is an inescapable consequence of the “easy” part of climate modeling. It’s pretty unlikely we’ve got that completely wrong. Certainly, it is sufficient to establish climate change as a credible threat.
dhogaza // January 25, 2009 at 4:59 pm |
…
You’d think that TCO, Feynman’s intellectual equal, much beloved by Joliffe, and self-proclaimed smartest skeptic in the world, would, after all these years, know this without being told.
Or perhaps his self-assessment of his ability and intellect is a bit inflated…
TCO // January 25, 2009 at 5:55 pm |
Ray, Pinatubo was not the first volcano to go off and have observation of it’s effects. It’s certainly likely that the designers of that model had reason to think of and even test how volcanos within the model display themselves.
Also, it is a very different forcing in time scale and nature, so performance well with one perturbation does not show that the model works well with others. Just because a model does well with kinetic reaction mechanisms does not mean that it will predict the folding of a protein structure well.
Yeah, I think the paleo as well as common sense are strong arguments for CO2 AGW. I am a bit worried that the models are actually getting “about the right answer” but not through some independant quality of the models. And they don’t seem to add much in terms of geopgraphy, specific predictions, etc. etc. I just sense that is a place where a lot of dollars and effort is going and it might not be the best place for it. Same with the darn stringers. Smart as shit. But a waste of physicists.
TCO // January 25, 2009 at 6:01 pm |
Yap-dhog:
“‘Moreover, you need to remain cognizant of the fact these are dynamical models. There aren’t really that many knobs you are free to turn. They are constrained by independent evidence to narrow values.’
You’d think that TCO…would…know this…”
I’ve heard this said, but have not investigated it myself. Also there have been some interesting statements in opposition from some non-skeptic types (the guy from Wisconsin for instance). So I really don’t know how many places there are for tweaking and not. Perhaps, they really are physically inherent…perhaps they have the proverbial 5 parameters (and I don’t mean a technical definition, of paramater, but any adjustable to include even design of routines) that allow for trunk wiggling on the proverbial elephant. I’m honestly not making the accusation…or saying that I know. If that sounds slack, so be it. I bet yap hasn’t really studied it more either, but just like a lefty version of jae likes sounding off with certainty.
dhogaza // January 25, 2009 at 7:37 pm |
Given your interest in disproving climate science, catching climate modelers out in a lie of this magnitude would do a great deal to undermine their crediblity.
Get on it!
Studied it, as in reading the code? No.
Paying attention to what modelers like Gavin Schmidt have to say? Yes.
I personally have no reason to believe he (and other climate modelers) are lying.
If you can prove they are, heck, you might change my mind …
Ray Ladbury // January 25, 2009 at 9:27 pm |
TCO, Here’s the deal. If you believe that climate change presents a credible threat–and it is hard to argue based on evidence that it doesn’t–then the models are the only tools we have for bounding risk for different CO2 concentrations, assessing effectiveness of potential geoengineering solutions, etc. As such, I think that you could argue that not enough is being spent on them. Certainly, you could argue that the scenarios painted by Ward, Hansen and Lovelock are not outside the realm of scientific respectability. Likewise Nordhaus.
Now granted, a risk assessment model is a different beast than a GCM, but the GCM are what we have now. I for one am hoping we get some more advanced scientific computing that allows more realistic simulation, so we can better determine appropriate level of effort.
TCO // January 26, 2009 at 12:31 am |
I’m not sure that coupled weather models are really giving much help. I think other approaches like EBM or paleo intuitions make more sense. It’s the whole thing of a weather model just followed over long times, that I’m not sure it’s really additive over the insights one could have anyhow. I worry that it’s a lot of doodling (despite feeling that on temp rise they are likely about right).
Paul Middents // January 26, 2009 at 2:52 am |
So we should revert to Energy Balance Models (EBM) from the 1980’s that we can all set up on Excel? Those might educate the hoi poloi but they will hardly advance our understanding of climate change.
Paleo intuitions? How do you translate Paleo work to the future without climate models?
TCO // January 26, 2009 at 3:49 am |
Paul, the lack of a better alternative, does not make the huge code projects more predictive. They either are or aren’t adding independant, valid insights. Ray, was the one who brought up paleo–I don’t know the details.
Ray Ladbury // January 26, 2009 at 2:13 pm |
TCO, Given a choice between a dynamical model and either a statistical model or something like and energy balance model, I’ll take the dynamical model any time. (Actually, I wish I had the opportunity to make that choice in my day job.)
Dynamical models are either right or wrong (or more accurately ala Box, slightly wrong or completely wrong). You don’t reproduce the trends in a complicated system by accident. Climate models have a long way to go before they help us get to a thorough understanding of climate. Any responsible modeler will admit that. They are more than adequate to establish that climate change is a serious and credible threat.
What is needed now are multiple types of models–improved climate models so we have a better idea how things play out regionally and globally as we warm, but also engineering models that help us prepare for the worst we are likely to be unable to avoid.
This is what Hansen is doing now at some level, and he’s finding that he can’t preclude the worst. He’s exploring the unknown unknowns. Nordhaus is taking a different approach of evaluating and mitigating the known risks. All these approaches are valid and necessary. They are an example of how the reality-based community approaches a threat. And then there’s the tin-foil hat crowd over at WUWT.
TCO // January 26, 2009 at 3:34 pm |
Ray,
1. thanks for your comments.
2. WUWT is an embarresment. And the “I’m not really endorsing him, but not calling him out either and he’s my little poll winner buddy” attitude of Lucia and SM is shoddy as well.
3. HIT the carriage return TWICE for a new paragraph!
Paul Middents // January 27, 2009 at 6:49 am |
Michael Tobis, my almost favorite climate blogger, had some interesting comments afew months back on the GCM problem of ever increasing complexity:
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2008/08/climate-models-is-there-better-way.html
Uli // January 27, 2009 at 12:11 pm |
Hallo len,
this is an answer to your questions from January 19, 2009 at 10:07 pm.
1.) CO2 was outgasing from the deep ocean during the warming at the end of the last ice age. the lag came from the time needed to accumulate CO2 in the atmosphere and the time needed to warm the deep ocean.
“amplification is one thing, causation another.” This I have not understand. We allready know that CO2 increase do cause decrease in outgoing infrared emmission and this cause an increase in temperature until the energy balance is restored. There is no need for time series (or correlation) of CO2 or temperature to prove that, nor can any time series (or correlation) of CO2 or temperature disprove that.
2.) As far I know correlations between cosmic rays and temperature and/or clouds are insignificant after the direct effect of solar radiation is removed. The influence of cosmic rays on global temperature seems substantial smaller than the direct solar influence on temperature if it at all exists. Even the direction (warming or cooling) is not clear.
3.)+4.) I can give you the results of my energy balance model (EBM) developed last year. This gives you a comparison of the relative size of the effects.
I will use 1900 1940 1975 and 2000 because this are the years you asked and newer data are less accurate
Note I have used the solare reconstruction of Lean (2000), see below. With the lower solar change of Wang (2005) used in the IPCC AR4 the solar influence form 1900 to 1940 would be less then half.
Temperature changes are given in K=°C. The data are smoothed because of large yearly changes in volcanic forcing.
I have no accurate data for “Land use, albedo” yet, but the impact is small.
Note the EBM can not account for el nino/la nina events. La nina has caused cooling around 1975 (as in the last 1-2 years) a change of approximately -0.1 K. Inclusion of this effect would make the total 1940 to 1975 change slight negative and increase the 1975 to 2000 total.
Ozone is for antropogenic changes only. The ozone change due solar UV is included in “Sun” and is 12 percent of this change. A “*” denotes sub-totals.
The list contains warming due human related changes; natural changes; and reactions on temperature changes especially ocean heat uptake that delays temperature changes
I hope that the next tables are readable.
Temperature changes:
1900 to 2000
CO2 +0.92 K
CH4 +0.33 K
N2O +0.10 K
CFC+other +0.25 K
O3 +0.10 K
*GHG-total +1.71 K
Direct heat +0.02 K
Aerosols -0.70 K
Land use, albedo -0.04 K
*Human changes +0.99 K
Sun +0.26 K
Volcanic aerosols +0.14 K
*Natural changes +0.40 K
**Human+natural changes +1.39 K
Ocean heat uptake -0.69 K
Land uptake and glacier effect -0.03 K
*Reactions on temperature change -0.72 K
***Total +0.67 K
Part due CO2 0.92/1.39 = 67 %
Part due humans 0.99/1.39 = 71 %
Part due sun 0.26/1.39 = 18 %
1900 to 1940
CO2 +0.17 K
CH4 +0.09 K
N2O +0.02 K
CFC+other +0.00 K
O3 +0.03 K
*GHG-total +0.31 K
Direct heat +0.00 K
Aerosols -0.19 K
Land use, albedo -0.03 K
*Human changes +0.08 K
Sun +0.17 K
Volcanic aerosols +0.18 K
*Natural changes +0.35 K
**Human+natural changes +0.44 K
Ocean heat uptake -0.23 K
Land uptake and glacier effect -0.01 K
*Reactions on temperature change -0.24 K
***Total +0.20 K
1940 to 1975
CO2 +0.29 K
CH4 +0.15 K
N2O +0.03 K
CFC+other +0.09 K
O3 +0.05 K
*GHG-total +0.62 K
Direct heat +0.01 K
Aerosols -0.35 K
Land use, albedo -0.00 K
*Human changes +0.28 K
Sun +0.03 K
Volcanic aerosols -0.13 K
*Natural changes -0.10 K
**Human+natural changes +0.18 K
Ocean heat uptake -0.10 K
Land uptake and glacier effect -0.00 K
*Reactions on temperature change -0.10 K
***Total +0.08 K
1975 to 2000
CO2 +0.46 K
CH4 +0.09 K
N2O +0.05 K
CFC+other +0.16 K
O3 +0.01 K
*GHG-total +0.78 K
Direct heat +0.01 K
Aerosols -0.15 K
Land use, albedo -0.01 K
*Human changes +0.63 K
Sun +0.06 K
Volcanic aerosols +0.09 K
*Natural changes +0.14 K
**Human+natural changes +0.77 K
Ocean heat uptake -0.37 K
Land uptake and glacier effect -0.01 K
*Reactions on temperature change -0.38 K
***Total +0.39 K
The sun has a warming form 1975 to 2000 because the sun was in minimum around 1975 but in maximum in 2000. The influence of the sun from 1980 maximum to 2000 maximum is -0.01 K, for comparisation.
The cooling around 1945 can not be simulated and is probably due uncorrected change in the measurement of the ocean temperature, see
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/06/of-buckets-and-blogs/langswitch_lang/en
5.) Check your source. The temperature data are linked here
http://tamino.wordpress.com/climate-data-links/
And also the solare reconstruction I used.
The cooling of the ocean in the last 1-2 years is caused mainly be the increased mixing in the ocean due the la nina.
The temperature of my EBM is almost flat over the last 5 years. Reduced solar insolation and aerosols more than compensate the effect of CO2 over the last 5 years and only the large ocean uptake of heat in the warming ten years ago prevent these times to be warmer then now.
But I have not sufficent data yet for antropogenic and vulcanic aerosols for the last years so I had to estimate these.
len // January 28, 2009 at 6:39 pm |
Uli,
Thanks. I’ll read through your analysis.
Thanks again.
Len
len // January 29, 2009 at 11:52 pm |
Hank/Dhog,
A link… remember we were talking last week about…” we don’t know what we don’t know”. It is being confirmed all of the time.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/22/correlation-demonstrated-bewteen-cosmic-rays-and-temperature-of-the-stratosphere/
Ray Ladbury // January 30, 2009 at 1:18 am |
Len,
And from such a reliable source! Come on, Len. You can do better than that. Why is it your skepticism only applies to CO2?
dhogaza // January 30, 2009 at 2:05 am |
Not at all, Watts is totally misunderstanding the research (and several readers in the thread point it out).
One of those pointing it out is solar scientist Leif Svalgaard, who says it better than I can:
Got it? It’s a new proxy for measuring the temperature of the stratosphere, not a new mechanism that warms the stratosphere.
This should be an excellent demostration as to why you should get your science from science, rather than dimwits like Watts who can’t read a paper like this without totally misunderstanding it, then posting his misunderstanding to a chorus of equally ignorant idiots who infest his site.
Please go read some real science rather than bother us, OK?
Ian Forrester // January 30, 2009 at 2:21 am |
Len, do you really want to be taken seriously? If so then refrain from referring to the nonsense posted at whatswrongwithwatt. It only confirms that you are a died in the wool denier.
Lee // January 30, 2009 at 2:26 am |
len,
You need to read that paper. Hell, even the blurb Watts posted doesn’t support his implication that this “gives new hope for Svenmark’s theory”.
“…cosmic-rays, known as muons are produced following the decay of other cosmic rays, known as mesons. Increasing the temperature of the atmosphere expands the atmosphere so that fewer mesons are destroyed on impact with air, leaving more to decay naturally to muons. Consequently, if temperature increases so does the number of muons detected.”
IOW, short term warm spells in the stratosphere CAUSE an increase in earth-surface muons. Get that? The causality here is TEMPERATURE CHANGES SURFACE-LEVEL COSMIC RADIATION. Stratospheric temperature affects earth-surface radiation – the Svensmark hypothesis is that cosmic radiation in the atmosphere affects atmospheric temperature. This has nothing to do with climate, and it is no support at all for the ‘cosmic rays control climate’ crap Anthony linked it to.
Anthony makes an abject fool of himself, in fact. (again). In the comments he repeatedly says:
“REPLY: I didn’t say it corroborated, you did, I said it provides “new hope for Svensmark’s theory” because it shows a measurable connection between cosmic rays and the upper atmosphere, something that has not been demonstrated before. The question is, what drives the change and how is it related to mesons and is the sudden stratospheric warming related to it?- Anthony”
Anthony is a dishonest fool – this is just another example.
Hank Roberts // January 30, 2009 at 4:51 am |
Len, if you want to learn, start with the basics. Read the FAQs. Read Weart’s site. Learn how to ask questions that show you have a critical sense.
To be increasingly ignored, take claims from sites like that and drop them onto science sites without even thinking them through. Or open a blog like that and see who shows up.
len // January 30, 2009 at 10:50 pm |
Gentlemen,
All good points. I read it thoroughly… and I also took the opportunity to read more of Svensmark’s work/comments. I readily admit there is no solid foundation here to modify GCMs or EBMs with, I’m just commenting that there are so many things that we don’t know yet. And some of them may end up having an as yet unsforseen affect on climate. Can anyone actually argue that this is possible?
dhogaza // January 31, 2009 at 12:20 am |
Fixed that for you. The fact that a thermometer reacts to changing temperatures provides NO foundation to modify GCMs to model an assumption that changing a thermometer reading causes temperature to change.
What bit of physics has been overturned by this discovery that a physical detection device can be used by clever people to measure something it wasn’t designed to measure?
What’s the big unknown that’s been discovered?
I’m sure the magic sky fairies that are responsible for global warming will reveal themselves soon.
David B. Benson // January 31, 2009 at 12:43 am |
len // January 30, 2009 at 10:50 pm — Very unlikely to have any large effects from remaining uncertainties. Probably aerosols remain the most important for continung research.
Renosme // February 10, 2009 at 2:53 pm |
Drawing a connection between two points in time and grounding you analysis on that connection is a little bit like reading the first and last page of a book and concluding that you know the whole story.
D. Bowyer // February 14, 2009 at 3:16 pm |
While we are all aguing about whether or not, the reality is you are not going to stop this from ocuring! You are all talkers of the great time waste.
[Response: Did you go through "It's not happening," then "It's happening but not due to human activity," then "It's happening due to human activity but it won't be that bad," before you got to "There's nothing we can do about it"?]
Zeke Hausfather // March 6, 2009 at 8:43 pm |
Tamino,
I took the liberty of recreating your analysis in this post in an article in response to the while George Will imbroglio: http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2009/03/george-wills-analysis-sea-ice/
I ended up with a very slightly different OLS regression function, but that might have been due to different baseline periods for calculating monthly anomolies (I used 1979-2000).